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Book •. Hl 
C opyright N n __ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOBiE 























Tinker and Thinker 

JOHN BUNYAN 

1628-1688 

by 

William Hamilton Nelson 



Drawn by Ralph Chessi 


Christian Climbs the 
Hill of Difficulty 




Tinker and Thinker 

JOHN BUNYAN 

1628-1688 

by 

William Hamilton Nelson 



WILLETT, CLARK & COLBY 

440 South Dearborn Street, Chicago 
200 Fifth Avenue , New York 


1928 




COPYRIGHT, 1928, BY WILLETT , CLARK <& COLBY 


PR33SI 

. Nf ; 


» C 

« c 

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( « < 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


OCf 29 1928 

©CIA 1399 


DEDICATED 


With Much Loye and Affection 
to my little red-headed daughter 

HOLLIS MARY NELSON 

•who has just turned jive 






CONTENTS 


The Tinker and His Times.1 

(The Boy —The Man) 

The Tinker and His Thoughts - - - - 79 


DRAWINGS BY 

Ralph Chesse 


San Francisco 

Christian Climbs the Hill of 

Difficulty .Frontispiece 

Christian Battles Apollyon.Page 22 

Bunyan in Prison.Page 54 

Elizabeth Bunyan at the Prison Gates.. Page 68 

The Slough of Despond.Page 120 

Giant Despair.Page 146 














































































































A Person al Word 
From the Author to His Readers . 

A little over thirty years ago, when I was 
a boy of sixteen, I walked into a second-hand 
book store in the French quarter of New Orleans, 
on Rue Chartres near Canal, and saw a large 
table filled with second-hand books which bore 
the enticing legend, “Any book on this table 20 
cents.” This just about fitted my pocketbook. 
Even at that age it was just as hard for me to 
pass a second-hand book store as it was for some 
folks to pass a saloon; so I began browsing 
around and picked up a book which had a refer¬ 
ence to Vanity Fair in it. I said to myself, “This 
must be something like Thackeray; it ought to 
be good.” 

Well, the book was good, but it was noth¬ 
ing like Thackeray. It was different from any¬ 
thing I had read. I wondered about it. It was 
not one of those Keys to the Bible which are so 
numerous in this country. As the French say, 
“on the contrary,” the Bible was the key to this 
book. I had never read the Bible, and so in order 


not to lose my twenty cents, I went around to 
another second-hand book store and bought a 
second-hand Bible for thirty-five cents. 

Although only sixteen I was making my 
own living at the time, working hard all day, and 
had leisure to read only at night. I looked up 
every Scripture reference in this second-hand 
book and it took me quite a while to read it. But 
when I got through reading the book I had been 
completely revolutionized. In the language of 
both books, I had been “born again.” It changed 
the whole current of my life. I started in with 
a man named Christian; ran with him from the 
City of Destruction; fell with him in the Slough 
of Despond; went into the House of the Inter¬ 
preter with him; went through the Wicket Gate, 
and felt my burden roll away at the foot of the 
cross; and I am still traveling the road he trod 
this side of the river. 

The name of that book is Pilgrim’s Progress. 
It was printed 250 years ago, July, 1678. It has 
done the same thing all over the world that it did 
for me. Next to the Bible it is translated into 
more languages than any book ever written. Por 
nearly a generation I have been saturated with 
the book; my life has been colored by it, and more 
than colored—it has been made by it. You can 


thus understand my zeal in sending forth this 
book as a tribute to the author of Pilgrim’s Prog¬ 
ress. Bunyan did a great deal for me; he can 
do the same for you. Get a copy of Pilgrim’s 
Progress, or Grace Abounding or The Holy 
War. “Read, mark, learn and inwardly digest,” 
and the result will be that you will walk in new¬ 
ness of life with Bunyan’s Lord. And this new 
life is worth everything. 

William Hamilton Nelson. 

San Francisco. 

1928 



Tinker and Thinker: 

JOHN BUNYAN 


The Tinker 
and His Times 

Here’s the story of a man; a man who 
believed something; believed something vital; 
believed something which touches every man to 
the very center, and which affects him at every 
turn of the road; the story of a man who 
struggled with those elemental mysteries of life 
more graphically than anything ever written in 
a Greek tragedy. 

This man believed something in an age when 
it was not easy to believe. He believed it against 
the edict of one of the crudest and most despotic 
of the Stuarts—Charles the Second—who ruled 
England at times with: a rod of iron. He believed 
what he believed in spite of acts of Parliament; 
he believed in spite of judges, jails and all the 
police power. He was willing to give up every¬ 
thing to believe something. On one side of the 


2 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


scale lie put a wife and four children whom he 
loved devotedly, a loving home, his business, his 
friends, and his health. On the other side he put 
his conscience and his duty to God and it out¬ 
weighed all the rest. 

In order to get you to know this man better 
and to get that elusive thing called “color,” which 
is so necessary to our understanding; I am going 
to do the thing that should be done, that must be 
done in painting a picture of this man: I am 
going to study him in connection with his times. 
We need men like that right now, and I am writ¬ 
ing with the prayer that what is said here may 
help us to get that type of man; so let’s go along 
together. 

Bunyan’s Boyhood in Tempestuous 
Seventeenth Century Days 

John Bunyan was born in November, 1628, 
three hundred years ago, at Elstow, one mile 
from the market town of Bedford, England. 
This is what is called the English Midlands, and 
lies between the River Trent and the Bedford¬ 
shire Ouse. His father, Thomas Bunyan, had 
him baptized in the Elstow church, according to 


JOHN BUNYAN 


3 


the parish register, on the 80th of November, 
1628. You would be interested to study this old 
register which shows that his father was baptized 
on the 24th of February, 1603, and that his name 
was spelled “Thomas Bunyon.” Then, when he 
was married in 1627 to Margaret Bentley, his 
name was spelled on the same register “Bon- 
nionn, ,, and when John was baptized, just a year 
later, they followed the spelling “Bonnionn.” 
Years before the Bunyans came over from Nor¬ 
mandy to England, and later settled in Bedford¬ 
shire. As early as 1199 they came to Elstow. 
The English farmers do not move around much, 
and everything of any importance that happened 
to John Bunyan happened right around there. 

Three years before Bunyan was born —and 
this is important—Charles the First came to the 
English throne. His father, James the First, who 
had the Bible translated, spent most of his time 
promulgating the now outworn doctrine of the 
divine right of kings. There was nothing in the 
English constitution responsible for this notion, 
but James said that he got it directly from God, 
always failing, however, to produce a certificate 
of copyright signed by the Almighty. But as he 
modestly expressed it, comparing himself to 


4 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Omnipotence, “As it is atheism and blasphemy to 
dispute what God can do, so it is presumption and 
a high contempt in a subject to dispute what a 
king can do.” This was directed especially at the 
Puritans of whom he said, “I will make them 
conform or I will harry them out of the land.” 

Charles was not as strong as his father, but 
he had all of his father’s absurd notions and none 
of his good ideas. He made two mistakes right 
off. He retained the Duke of Buckingham, his 
father’s favorite, as his chief advisor, though 
nobody had any confidence in the Duke; and 
soon after Charles took the throne he married 
Henrietta Maria, a French Catholic princess, 
who was very extravagant. I am quite sure that 
this French lady has never been given the proper 
credit for the way her extravagance influenced 
English history. It led to the downfall of the 
divine right of kings, and helped, indirectly, to 
make John Bunyan. 

The year Bunyan was born, just a few 
months before his birth, June 1628, the Petition 
of Right was presented by the Lords, spiritual 
and temporal, and the Commons. This petition 
was considered dangerous and explosive in that 
day, but today it only causes us to smile to think 


JOHN BUNYAN 


5 


that they had to get up a petition on anything of 
the sort. The petition merely asked the king to 
stop grafting, in that henceforth no person 
would be compelled to make loans to him against 
his will, and no man should be imprisoned, disin¬ 
herited nor put to death without being brought 
to answer by the due process of law. Reasonable 
enough; but Charles felt terribly insulted when 
it was presented and refused to sign it at first. 
Now wasn’t this a nice age to throw a helpless 
baby into? 

It is likely that Bunyan never read a book of 
history in his life, but there was a lot of interest¬ 
ing history being made fresh every day when he 
came on the scene. In the early part of the seven¬ 
teenth century there was more in a day than just 
morning, noon and night, as you shall see. Some¬ 
times, and really quite often, there were what 
Lord Tennyson called, speaking of the hectic 
reign of an English queen, ‘‘spacious days.” 

Thomas Bunyan had a large family of chil¬ 
dren, the poor man’s only heritage in that day— 
and this—and the problem of getting three meals 
a day for hungry and growing children pushed 
all other thoughts to the back of his head. Bun¬ 
yan himself said, speaking of his family and 


6 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


their standing as tinkers, that they were looked 
upon by the people of England at that time as 
“the meanest and most despised of all families 
of the land.” However, this may be in reverse 
English—just as a man often calls himself “the 
chief of sinners”—but it is a pleasant rebound 
from the usual indoor occupation of bragging on 
families. 

Bunyan said that he never went to school to 
Aristotle or to Plato, but was brought up in his 
father’s house (they were not gypsies) in a very 
mean condition among a company of poor coun¬ 
trymen. There were very few schools in England 
at that time—there were none in Elstow—but 
there was one in Bedford, a mile away, endowed 
by the generosity of a good man, and Bunyan 
walked the mile from Elstow to Bedford and 
got a smattering of the three R’s. 

Wonderful Dreams 

When Bunyan was nine years of age he 
began to have some wonderful dreams. The 
intellectual electricity which was in the air set his 
mind to working, and he began to be concerned, 
not about politics, but about his own soul. There 


JOHN BUNYAN 


7 


was in him a tendency toward evil, and yet there 
was this innate religious nature at work like a 
ferment, which resulted in these dreams. He 
saw evil spirits in all sorts of hideous shapes, and 
fiends blowing long incandescent flames out of 
their mouths. Often the heavens were on fire and 
burning up like a house, and all the thunder ever 
manufactured was at work; and in the midst of 
it all an archangel flying through heaven, sound¬ 
ing his trumpet; and seated on a throne in the 
east sat a Glorious One like the bright and morn¬ 
ing star. This of course was the end of the world 
to his mind, and he did what we all would have 
done, boy or man: he fell on his knees ana 
prayed, “O Lord, have mercy on me. What shall 
I do? The day of judgment is come and I am 
not prepared.” 

In another dream, when he was out having 
a roystering good time, an earthquake cracked 
the world, and out of the canyons came blood and 
fire, and men dressed up in flaming globes, while 
devils laughed at their torments. The earth 
began to sink under him, the flames licked near 
him, but when he began to think he was about to 
perish, One in shining raiment descended and 
plucked him as a brand from the burning. In 


8 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


the daytime also, like Joan of Arc, he had vision? 
and heard voices. 

It is a good thing for John Bunyan that he 
lived when he did, for if he had lived today all 
sorts of folks would be “projekin” with him, as 
the old Southern negroes say. He would be sub¬ 
jected to Binet tests and whatnot. Supposedly 
superior people today would laugh at that 
strange, earnest-minded boy for some of the 
things he did. They would want to cure him, 
sending him to a n»rve specialist or a psychia¬ 
trist ; or they would have him psycho-analyzed— 
and spoil him. 

As far as I am concerned I am quite sure that 
God was dealing with that boy’s soul. Those 
dreams and that perfervid imagination came in 
handy later on for his immortal book, for the 
Pilgrim’s Progress was written under the simili¬ 
tude of a dream, and with the aid of an imagina¬ 
tion which worked for the blessing of the world. 

Bunyan at Twelve 
Royalist and Roundhead Strife 

In 1640, when Bunyan was twelve years of 
age, the Earl of Strafford became prime min- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


9 


ister, and by means of the Star Chamber sought 
to make Charles absolute and establish a com¬ 
plete despotism. Archbishop Laud, who soon 
became head of the Established Church, worked 
with Strafford through the High Commission 
court. These religio-politico twins furnished a 
horrible example for the union of Church and 
State: The Star Chamber put in prison those 
who refused the king’s demands for money, and 
the High Commission punished those who could 
not conform to the Established Church. 

The next little piece of graft the king tried 
to work was known as Ship Money. This tax 
was to furnish equipment for the standing army 
—to guarantee that the king might keep his 
crown on straight. The pretext was the flimsiest 
in that it was to protect the English coast from 
Algerian pirates—he overlooked the Swiss navy. 
This Ship Money tax started a farmer named 
John Hampden going, for they taxed the inland 
towns as well as the seacoast. Hampden and 
another farmer named Oliver Cromwell, his 
cousin, felt that they had stood about all they 
could. They got on a boat in the Thames all set 
to emigrate to the American colonies, but were 
stopped by the king’s orders. It is safe to say 


10 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


that Charles regretted his action at least ten 
thousand times in the balance of his worthless 
life, for Hampden and Cromwell started a revo¬ 
lution which cost the king his head. 

In 1640 Bunyan was twelve years of age. 
The Long Parliament met that year, and was 
composed of sure-enough Englishmen. We can 
think whatever we please about the English, but 
in spite of kings and headsmen and prison, the 
urge for liberty is strong within them. Parlia¬ 
ment sentenced Strafford to execution for his 
oppression. The king refused to sign the death 
warrant, but the people were so clamorous that 
he had to do it. 

They next got Laud for attempting to, 
overthrow the Protestant religion; they abolished 
the Star Chamber and the High Commission 
court, and they passed a bill requiring Parlia¬ 
ment to be summoned once in three years. They 
followed this by drawing up the Grand Remon¬ 
strance, in which they held up to the light the 
faults of the king’s government, and their dis¬ 
trust in his policy. Then they enacted a law 
forbidding “the dissolution of the present Par¬ 
liament except by its own consent.” And not 
only that, but they were on the verge of drawing 


JOHN BUNYAN 


11 


up a bill of impeachment against the queen for 
having conspired with the Roman Catholics and 
the Irish to destroy the liberties of the country. 

Charles knew that they had the goods on his 
wife, and so he was driven to extremities. He 
requested the House of Commons to give up the 
five members who headed the impeachment pro¬ 
ceedings, on the charge of high treason, which 
they refused to do. The queen taunted him: “Go, 
coward; pull those rogues out by the ears.” He 
went with an armed force, but the members were 
in hiding. He asked the Speaker of the House 
where they were, but this servile tool, kneeling 
before the king, was so afraid of Parliament that 
he could only say, “I neither see nor speak but 
by command of the House.” There was no stand¬ 
ing army in England in those days, but there was 
a body of militia in every county and in every 
large town, and these were occasionally called out 
to drill. The king started the civil war by leav¬ 
ing London and going to Nottingham to get an 
army to attack Parliament. 

England was pretty well divided by an 
irregular line running as far north as York, 
which cut the country almost in two; the east 
half, including London, going with Parliament, 


12 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


and the west half lining up with the king. The 
nobility, the clergy and the country gentlemen, 
known as cavaliers because they were fine horse¬ 
men, were in the king’s army, while the petty 
tradesmen and small farmers were with Parlia¬ 
ment. Both sides had to make great sacrifices to 
carry on the war. The grasping queen was com¬ 
pelled to sell her crown jewels, illustrating Don 
Quixote’s proverb, “Coveteousness bursts the 
bag.” 

The first battle between the Royalists and 
Roundheads was fought at Edgehill, in 1642, 
and was a victory for the king. Each of the 
rival armies carried a printing press with it, and 
waged furious battle in type against the other. 
The whole country was sown down with pam¬ 
phlets, about thirty thousand of them coming 
out in a few years, discussing every conceivable 
religious and political question. 

When Bunyan Was Only 
Fourteen 

When the war broke in ’42 Bunyan was only 
fourteen years of age. The visions and voices had 
ceased temporarily. He says of this period that 


JOHN BUNYAN 


13 


God left him to himself, and delivered him over 
to his wicked imagination. He fell into all kinds 
of petty vice, such as poaching, ringing church 
bells, and the severer vice of swearing. This last 
was Bunyan’s besetting sin, and stayed with him 
until he was a grown man. He was morally 
clean, for in later years he said with a good deal 
of emphasis, that no matter what else he did he 
had never gone astray on the vice of uncleanness. 

Of course he had high animal spirits as a 
boy; he was healthy and vigorous, and he was 
always into something. Once or twice he nearly 
lost his life. He fell in a creek that led into the 
sea, and was on the point of drowning; and 
another time he fell in the River Ouse, and 
nearly met a watery grave. He says of himself 
in his “History of Mr. Badman,” “Though I 
could sin with delight and ease, and take pleasure 
in the villainies of my companions, even then if 
I saw wicked things done by them that professed 
goodness it would make my spirit tremble. Once, 
when I was in the height of my vanity, hearing 
one swear who was reckoned a religious man, it 
made my heart to ache.” 

When Bunyan was sixteen his mother died, 
and in another month his sister Margaret passed 


14 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


away. A month after that his father married 
again. John felt this very keenly, and it is 
believed that this strong-minded, independent 
boy left home and started out in business on his 
own account, mending pots and pans. Bedford¬ 
shire was in Parliamentary territory. The feel¬ 
ing against the king was almost unanimous there, 
and when an order came to Bedford for a com¬ 
pany of soldiers for the Parliamentary army 
Bunyan was drafted. The roster rolls of New¬ 
port Pagnell, discovered a few years ago, show 
that Bunyan served under Sir Samuel Lake, the 
original of Butler’s Hudibras. He was probably 
close to seventeen then. 

Bunyan — the Soldier 

He was not a militarist; you find only a 
meager reference to his army experience in any¬ 
thing he wrote. One thing made an impression 
on his mind, and that was an experience that bor¬ 
dered on the religious. He writes these words: 
“When I was a soldier I was with others drawn 
out to go to such a place to besiege it. But when 
I was just ready to go one of the company 
desired to go in my room. Coming to the siege 


JOHN BUNYAN 


15 


as he stood sentinel he was shot in the heart with 
a musket ball, and died.” However, as much as 
he refrained from any boasting of his own part 
in the war it is certain that Bunyan got some of 
his material for the “Holy War” out of this 
brief army experience of one year. He was born 
with literary talent; it was a gift, and quite 
naturally all was grist that came to his mill. 

Political and Religious Turmoil 
Sweeps on 

When Bunyan was seventeen the war came 
to an end, Cromwell putting the finishing touches 
to the affair when he cleaned up all north Eng¬ 
land by his smashing victory at Naseby in 1645. 
After the fight, papers belonging to the king 
were picked up on the battle field which proved 
that Charles intended betraying those who were 
negotiating with him for peace and that he was 
planning to bring foreign troops to England. 
The army ruled England after Charles was taken 
prisoner. 

In 1648 Charles fled to the Isle of Wight, 
came back early in January, ’49, raised an army, 
and was defeated at the Battle of Preston. On 


16 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


January 20, 1649, he was brought into court, 
adjudged guilty of being an enemy to the coun¬ 
try, and ten days later, on January 30th, he was 
executed. Soon after that the Commonwealth 
was established. In less than two months the 
House of Commons passed the act making Eng¬ 
land a republic, and the House of Lords was 
abolished as both “dangerous and useless.” 

At this time religion was in the air. The 
Commonwealth or Parliamentary army, espe¬ 
cially Oliver Cromwell’s “Old Ironsides,” was 
composed of men who could watch as well as 
pray. “Have faith in God and keep your powder 
dry,” that was their motto. Like the army of 
Stonewall Jackson, they held numerous prayer 
meetings. Cromwell said of them, “A lovely 
company.” They were God-fearing men, and 
neither swore nor gambled. It was an army in 
which a consecrated corporal could preach to a 
callous colonel, if such an individual could be 
found. The common soldiers not only prayed in 
private, but in public, and got up in the pulpit 
and preached to the people. The Parliamentary 
army carried a printing press around with it and 
when they were not fighting the enemy they were 
arguing and writing on religion. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


17 


Back of the army the civilians, especially the 
farmers and artisans, were anticipating William 
Blake, and were trying to make the New Jeru¬ 
salem come down to the commons of England. 
The Sabbath was observed with great strictness; 
the churches were crowded, not once, but three 
and four times on Sunday; family altars were 
established, and people prayed around the hearth¬ 
stone, read the Bible, and discussed sermons. 
They talked religion on the streets, in the shops, 
and in the fields. It is said that in that time you 
might walk through the city of London on a 
Sunday evening without seeing an idle person, 
or hearing anything but the voice of prayer or 
praise from churches and private houses. There 
were no gambling houses or profane houses; 
swearing was punished severely. No wonder 
Bunyan came under severe religious conviction 
at this time. 


Bunyan the Boy 
Becomes Bunyan the Man 

In 1649, the year of the establishment of the 
Commonwealth, with John Bradshaw as presi¬ 
dent, John Milton foreign secretary, Cromwell 


18 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


one of the commanders in chief of the fighting 
forces, the army was the real power behind the 
throne, before the throne, on the side of the 
throne, and for that matter, under it. The safety 
of the Commonwealth was truly under the 
shadow of swords. In 1649 Bunyan married. He 
was working at the tinker’s trade at that time. It 
is interesting to note right here that in 1905 Bun- 
yan’s anvil with his name stamped on it and the 
date 1647, was discovered in a pile of rubbish at 
St. Neots, near Bedford. Bunyan married a 
woman, some distance from Elstow, and was very 
fortunate, for she was an orphan, and had no 
close friends or relatives. He was lucky again, 
for she was a poor girl, and it is easy to bring 
that kind up in the style to which they are accus : 
tomed. 

Bunyan said they were so poor, both of 
them, that when they married they had not so 
much household stuff as a dish or a spoon 
between them. But she had a dowry far better 
than silver plate: her father was a godly man, 
and left a good name and a good influence. 
Also she brought her husband two books, which 
changed the whole current of his being. One was 
called, “The Practice of Piety,” and the other, 


JOHN BUNYAN 


19 


“The Plain Man’s Pathway to Heaven.” Like 
Paola and Francesca, though with a pure love, 
they used to turn the leaves of the open book 
together. Much of their happiness consisted in 
sitting by the fire and reading to each other after 
the hard day’s work was done. 

“The Plain Man’s Pathway” influenced 
Bunyan a great deal, and some critics say that 
much of it filtered into his mind and came out in 
“The Life and Death of Mr. Badman,” pub¬ 
lished thirty years later. “The Pathway” is a 
dialogue between four people on the question of 
the soul’s salvation. It was written in simple 
English and had some choice epigrams in it. Con¬ 
sider these: “A fool’s bolt is soon shot,” and “He 
that never doubted never believed.” Of course 
everything that comes up in a man’s religious 
life is discussed, and it borders on casuistry in 
ethical questions. The reading of this book stirred 
Bunyan until, like Mr. Attentive in the book, he 
was greatly concerned for his soul. 

Four Years of Sense of Sin 

There were times in Bunyan’s life when his 
sense of sin was like a volcano. One morning I 


20 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


stood on the top of a building in Red Bluff, 
California, and saw Mount Lassen, the only live 
volcano in the United States, blowing its head 
off. There was a thick volume of black smoke 
rising out of the crater, and then mushrooming 
over the top. Occasionally the black smoke was 
cut by livid flames of fire, just as a golden knife 
will cut a dark garment. The next day Lassen 
was dormant, and was that way for nearly a year, 
when it broke out again. Bunyan had spells of 
conviction, and then his religious nature would be 
dormant, and then he would become anxious 
again. 

John’s despair in these periods of conviction 
reached to the veiy bowels of the earth. Out of 
the depths he cried unto God; he struggled with 
weepings in the miry clay and the horrible pit, his 
Slough of Despond. After his marriage his des¬ 
pair reached the deepest depths. We are not try¬ 
ing to be facetious; we are simply recording a 
fact of history. Bunyan had the exceedingly 
good fortune of being happily married. His wife 
was desperately in love with him, but earthly love 
could not satisfy the craving of a heart which was 
blindly groping after God. Like the Psalmist he 
could say, “My heart and my flesh crieth out for 


JOHN BUNYAN 


21 


God, for the living God. When shall I come and 
appear before God?” 

Like his own Christian his burden was 
breaking his back and his heart. He was in 
Doubting Castle kept by Giant Despair, and he 
believed there was no hope for him. He would 
be damned eternally; his day of grace had 
passed; in fact he thought it had passed for all 
the people in that part of England who were not 
Jews. He tried to believe he had Jewish blood 
in him, but the family tree was against him. He 
got it into his head that he had committed the 
unpardonable sin, and a well-meaning but mis¬ 
guided old man, to whom he went for advice, 
told him that he was sure he had. He heard 
voices begging him to betray his Lord, and he 
would cry out audibly, “Not for ten thousand 
worlds.” But then the voices of the fiends would 
become more insistent than ever, and finally the 
only way he could get rid of them was to say, 
“Let him (Christ) go if he will.” He believed 
that he had thus sold his Christ, and his despair 
almost drove him frantic. 

Bunyan’s work, “Grace Abounding to the 
Chief of Sinners” is a spiritual autobiography, 
and he lays his soul bare in it. The years from 








JOHN BUNYAN 


23 


’49 to ’53 were perhaps the most dramatic, dyn¬ 
amic and terrible in his life. Most of the time he 
was not only at Mount Sinai amid the thunders 
and lightnings and the terrible voices, but he was 
walking down the main street of hell. You will 
remember in the Pilgrim’s Progress one of the 
most dramatic incidents is where Christian in the 
Valley of Humiliation fights with the fiend 
Apollyon. According to Bunyan, this monster 
was hideous to behold. He was clothed with scales 
like a fish, had wings like a dragon, feet like a 
bear, and out of his belly came fire and smoke, 
and his mouth was the mouth of a lion. You will 
remember that in the conflict this monster threw 
darts as thick as hail, and wounded Christian in 
the head, the hand and the foot. The combat was 
sore, and lasted until Christian grew faint 
because of his many wounds. I imagine that when 
Bunyan was writing the Progress he turned 
often to these memorable four years. 

Bunyan was trying to raise himself by his 
boot-straps religiously. He began to lop off this 
sin and put on that virtue. He began to attend 
church twice on Sunday and to quit poaching. 
One Sunday after having heard a sermon on 
Sabbath-breaking he was out on the village green 


24 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


at Bedford in the afternoon, indulging in his 
usual game of tip-cat, in some ways the great, 
great grand-father of baseball. He was just 
about to hit the ball when he seemed to hear a 
voice in the heavens calling unto him saying, 
“Wilt thou leave thy sins and go to heaven, or 
keep thy sins and go to hell?” So he quit playing 
tip-cat. 

Also a favorite sport of that time which 
troubled his conscience was ringing bells in the 
tower of Elstow church. He gave this practice 
up after a struggle. He tells us about it in his 
own quaint way: “I would go to the steeplehouse 
and look on, though I durst not ring, . . . but 
quickly after I began to think how if one of the 
bells should fall? So after this I would yet go to 
see them ring, but would not go any farther than 
the steeple door. But then it came into my head, 
how if the steeple itself should fall? Auid this 
thought . . . did continually so shake my mind 
that I durst not stand at the steeple door any 
longer, but was forced to flee for fear the steeple 
should fall upon my head.” So Bunyan quit 
ringing church bells, but instead of trimming the 
branches he realized later that he should have 
been laying his ax at the root of the tree. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


25 


One day he was in Bedford looking for pots 
and kettles to mend, and he stood outside of a 
little shop to talk to the proprietor. He was so in 
the habit of swearing that he seemed to do it 
automatically. A woman with a notorious repu¬ 
tation was in the shop, and she told him that she 
had had a lot of experience, but he was the most 
ungodly swearer she had ever heard, and that he 
was enough to spoil all the boys in the town. He 
said the reproof struck him right between the 
joints in his armor, and cut him to the quick. 
That a person of this character should object to 
his swearing was the limit. He resolved to quit 
right then. 


The “Holy War” 

Within Himself 

Not long after this he heard some old ladies 
in Bedford—there were four in the group, I 
believe—who were sitting out on a doorstep talk¬ 
ing about the things of God. He kept in the 
background where he could not be seen, for he 
was interested, but he listened in. They were 
doing what the Methodist folks were to do 
later: telling their experiences. Experience is the 


26 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


crowning glory of the Christian religion, and it 
is the one answer to every question. When a man 
can tell what he has seen and felt he has some¬ 
thing that people will listen to. But everything 
they were saying was over Bunyan’s head. 
Religion to him was like a Christmas tree, which 
you trimmed down and then dolled up, hanging 
on presents; to them it was like a tree planted by 
the rivers of water, which brought forth fruit in 
season; not fruit hung on, but which grew natu¬ 
rally and came from a live center. They talked 
of the new birth, and this was something new to 
him. He wanted to know more of it, so he made 
it a point to talk to some of these good ladies 
every time he could. They finally became quite 
interested in him, and directed him to the Rev. 
John Gifford. 

At this time Gifford was rector of St. John’s 
Church in Bedford, although he was a Baptist. 
This was a strange situation. When the Com¬ 
monwealth came to power the Episcopal Church 
was disestablished. The bench of Bishops was 
abolished, and the dominant churches were the 
Congregationalists and the Presbyterians. These 
two large factions were divided, but Cromwell’s 
Toleration Order did much to bring them to- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


27 


gether, helping also the smaller non-conformist 
bodies, as the Quakers, the Baptists, and others. 
This order settled the question of church govern¬ 
ment, which was the bone of contention, and 
allowed each congregation to choose its own min¬ 
ister, and select its own form of church govern¬ 
ment. The only thing asked was that the gov¬ 
ernment must be satisfied as to the moral and 
intellectual efficiency of the man nominated by a 
congregation to be its minister. 

Practically all of Bedfordshire at this time 
was in sympathy with the Commonwealth and 
its laws, and the majority that took charge of 
St. John’s Church called Gifford to be its rector. 
The Rev. John Gifford had a war experience 
himself. He had been drafted into the Royalist 
army in the west of England, was taken prisoner 
by the Roundheads and sentenced to be hanged. 
His sister came to visit him, and found out that 
she could effect his escape. He got out in the 
night, went into hiding, and after the war was 
over came to Bedford to settle down. He became 
a quack doctor, but falling under religious con¬ 
viction was converted and became a pastor of the 
church in Bedford. Gifford was never a Royalist 
at heart, politically or religiously, and after his 


28 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


conversion he became very zealously independent. 
If he was not an orthodox doctor he became an 
orthodox preacher, for he filled St. Paul’s pre¬ 
scription, “called to be saints.” He was called, 
“the holy Mr. Gifford,” and some think that 
Bunyan had him in mind when he drew the 
character of Evangelist in the Pilgrim. 

In “Grace Abounding” Bunyan says that at 
this time he sat under the ministry of holy Mr. 
Gifford, “whose doctrine by God’s grace was 
much for my stability.” He said Gifford made 
it his business to deliver folk from all that was 
false and unsound; exhorting them not to take 
things too easily, but to cry mightily to God. No 
doubt Bunyan was passing through deep waters 
at this time, and Gifford, who believed in being 
very thorough, did not minimize the struggle. He 
believed that the kingdom of heaven suffered and 
the violent took it by force. He was a help to 
Bunyan, but for awhile he made Bunyan go 
deeper down, just as a pearl diver has to get to 
the bottom before he can bring up his treasure. 
And he impressed it on Bunyan that he could 
help him only up to a certain point; that finally 
he had to stand alone. Naked the soul goes up to 
God, and naked do we fight our own battles. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


29 


I have no doubt but that this experience 
with Gifford had its effect on the writing of the 
Pilgrim. Christian fights it out with the fiend 
Apollyon without anyone whispering directions 
to him as to how to handle his sword. Gifford 
did help Bunyan, but it was not the work of a 
day or a week, for Gifford was not easy on him, 
or anyone else, when it came to the salvation of 
the soul, and Bunyan was not easy on himself. 

Bunyan said that he was at this time farther 
than ever from the kingdom. As he expressed it, 
“As to the act of sinning I was never more tender 
than now. I durst not take up a pin or a stick 
though but so big as a straw, for my conscience 
was now sore and would smart at every touch. I 
could not tell how to speak my words for fear I 
should misplace them.” He joined the Baptist 
church, was baptized in the River Ouse, but did 
not have the assurance that he had passed from 
death unto life. The experience of all great 
saints is that the Christian life is not a battle 
but a war. They may lose a battle but win the 
war; they may lose a battle, win a battle, and lose 
the next time; there may be many battles before 
the issue is settled finally. Bunyan experienced 
this, and I think that is one of the reasons why 


30 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


he wrote his “Holy War” wherein the battle 
rages, not once or twice but several times. This 
is the story of Christian also in the Pilgrim. And 
so, soon after this baptism the fight was on, and 
harder than ever. 

Bunyan Doubts — 

But Battles on 

In the “Holy War” that “nimble-Jack” 
Mr. Unbelief, is the only one who finally makes 
his escape after all the Diabolians are slain. This 
is true in the case of every Christian, the last 
enemy to be destroyed is Doubt. This was 
Bunyan’s doubting time. He doubted whether 
the holy scriptures were false or true; whether 
Christ was divine or merely a human being; he 
even doubted the existence of God. He ques¬ 
tioned whether the Koran was not as good as the 
Bible, and whether Mohammed was not as good 
as Jesus. The millions of people in the various 
parts of the world who had never even heard of 
Christ worried him. He thought of the Jews, 
Mohammedans, pagans, who all believed in their 
religion, and he wondered if Christianity was 
but a “think-so,” too? 


JOHN BtJNYAN 


31 


He even believed he was possessed of the 
devil, and a whole string of sulphurous blas¬ 
phemy was poured into his ears. He believed 
that there was not the slightest chance for him. 
He thought he heard God saying of him, “This 
poor, simple wretch doth hanker after Me, as 
if I had nothing to do but to bestow it on such 
as he. Poor fool; how art thou deceived. It is 
not for such as thee to have favor with the High¬ 
est.” Those were days of great tempest and dark 
and lowering clouds. “He dwelt in the land of 
darkness as darkness itself and where the light 
was as darkness.” The Book of Job has been 
called an epic, and the life of Job approaches 
tragedy; so it was with the life of Bunyan, who 
was just as desperately in earnest as the Man 
of Uz. God is love, and God is light, but for a 
man who has not been pardoned it is a fearful 
thing to fall into the hand of the living God, for 
in the depths of conviction he is a consuming 
fire. Bunyan could say of his spiritual torment 
what Job said: 

“He teareth me in his wrath who hateth me; 
he gnasheth upon me with his teeth; mine enemies 
sharpen their eyes upon me. They have gaped 
upon me with their mouth; they have smitten me 


32 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


upon the cheek reproachfully; they have gathered 
themselves together against me. God hath deliv¬ 
ered me over to the ungodly, and turned me over 
into the hands of the wicked. I was at ease, but he 
hath broken me asunder; he hath also taken me 
by my neck and shaken me to pieces, and set me 
up for his mark. His archers compass me round 
about; he cleaveth my reins asunder, and doth 
not spare, he poureth out my gall upon the 
ground. He breaketh me with breach upon 
breach; he runneth upon me like a giant. My 
face is foul with weeping, and on mine eyelids is 
the shadow of death. My breath is corrupt, my 
days are extinct, the graves are ready for me!” 

And yet all the while he followed hard after 
God. He was trying to rely on the written 
Word. He had all sorts of tests as to whether he 
was received of God or not. On one occasion he 
was walking on the road between Elstow and 
Bedford, and was thinking of the story of 
Gideon. You remember Gideon asked God for 
a sign, and the fleece was wet or dry according 
to his desire. Bunyan was tempted to ask the 
Lord to dry up the horseponds, and make some 
dry places a pool. But then that strain of hard 
sense which characterized him in latter life came 


JOHN BUNYAN 


33 


to the surface for air on this occasion, and he 
concluded he had better go behind the hedge and 
pray over it first, for he argued that if it did 
not come out as he expected he would be 
desperate. 

Now and then a ray of sunlight burst 
through. He was riding in the country, and the 
Scripture came into his mind while he was mus¬ 
ing on his wickedness, “He hath made peace 
through the blood of his cross.” He saw that the 
justice of God and his sinful soul could embrace 
and kiss each other. He saw Christ in the spirit 
on the right hand of the Father pleading for 
him. Also at that time, fortunately, Luther’s 
Preface to the Commentary on Galatians fell 
into his hands, so old that it was like to fall to 
pieces. He said, “I do prefer this book of Martin 
Luther (excepting the Holy Bible) before all 
books that ever I have seen as most fit for a 
wounded conscience.” 

He had “gained Christ,” as he termed it, 
and yet it all seemed too good to be true. Salva¬ 
tion was so precious to him that he could hardly 
believe it. An old temptation in a new form 
assailed him. He was tempted to sell this most 
blessed Christ, to exchange him for the things 


84 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


of this life. He said that for a year there were 
days when nothing else was in his mind. He 
could hardly sleep. The devils were dinning it 
into his brain, “Sell Christ for this; sell Christ 
for that; sell him; sell him, ,, and Bunyan would 
cry out in his agony, “I will not, I will not.” 

But finally, he must have been thoroughly 
distracted and brain fevered, for he yielded when 
worn out: “Let him go if he will.” He said he 
felt like a bird shot from a tree. He got out of 
bed and went “moping” in the fields at the dead 
of night. He was a Judas, an Esau; he was 
worse than both of them put together. Bunyan 
was in the Valley of the Shadow. You remember 
in the Pilgrim Christian asked those who had 
been in the Valley what they had seen. Their 
reply was, “Seen! Why, the Valley itself, which 
is as dark as pitch: we also saw there the hob¬ 
goblins, satyrs, and dragons of the pit: we heard 
also in that Valley a continued howling and yell¬ 
ing, as of a people under unutterable misery, 
who there sat bound in affliction and irons; and 
over that Valley the discouraging clouds of con¬ 
fusion: Death, also, doth always spread his wings 
over it. In a word, it is every whit dreadful, 
being utterly without order.” 


JOHN BUNYAN 


35 


And then, in the very depths of his despair 
there was a flash of light. He says, “One day as 
I was passing into the field, and that too with 
some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet 
all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon 
my soul, ‘Thy righteousness is in heaven.’ And 
methought withal, I saw with the eyes of my 
soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand; there, I 
say, was my righteousness; so that wherever I 
was, or whatever I was doing, God could not 
say to me, ‘He wants my righteousness,’ for that 
was just before him. I also saw, moreover, that 
it was not my good frame of heart that made my 
righteousness worse; for my righteousness was 
Jesus Christ himself, ‘the same yesterday, today 
and for ever.’ ” 

The Chains Fell Off 

He says that at this time the chains fell off 
his legs, he was loosed from his afflictions and 
irons which had bound his hands, his temptations 
fled away, and from that time “those dreadful 
scriptures of God left off to trouble me. Now I 
went home rejoicing for the grace and love of 
God. Christ of God is made unto us wisdom 


36 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


and righteousness, and sanctification and redemp¬ 
tion. I now lived very sweetly, at peace with 
God through Christ. Oh, Merciful Christ! 
Christ! There was nothing but Christ before my 
eyes.” 

Political Changes Destined to 
Affect Bunyan’s Life 

Right about this time political changes were 
occurring in England which were destined to 
affect Bunyan’s whole life. They were going to 
be hard on him physically, and even his fair 
financial status would be dreadfully disturbed. 
His family would be hard hit, and he knew it. 
But the trouble he was called to go through 
would make him mentally and spiritually, and if 
the thing we are about to relate had not hap¬ 
pened it is likely the world would never have 
known John Bunyan, and Pilgrim's Progress 
would never have been written. 

In 1658 Oliver Cromwell died. We believe 
in eugenics. It is a great blessing for a child to 
be well born. We believe that blood will tell, but 
there is no recipe for genius, and there is no sure 
means of inheriting outstanding ability. The old 


JOHN BUNYAN 


37 


miners out in California in the days of ’49 used 
to say, that gold was wherever you found it. It 
is that way with genius and superabundant 
mental strength. If you do not believe this just 
run over the list of great men, and look up their 
children. 

For instance take the case of Oliver Crom¬ 
well and Richard Cromwell. You can hate Oliver 
Cromwell all you please, but he was Old Iron¬ 
sides himself. If I were an artist and wanted to 
paint a picture of Strength I would show 
Cromwell kicking the Rump Parliament out, 
locking the door of the House of Commons, and 
putting the key in his pocket. During his reign 
as Protector, from 1653 to 1658, he not only 
made England respected all over the world, 
which the Stuarts had never done, but he made 
England feared. When he died his son, Richard, 
came to the throne, and reigned only eight 
months, pleased beyond measure when the army 
leaders told him to get out. The job of ruling 
England was too heavy for “Tumble-down- 
Dick,” and he gladly retired into obscurity, cher¬ 
ishing to the end of his life an old trunk filled 
with congratulatory addresses and honeyed reso¬ 
lutions which the English knew how to write so 


38 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


well. Tumble-down-Dick’s resignation spelled 
trouble for Bunyan, as we will show. 

In 1660 Charles the Second, a refugee in 
Holland, was invited to return to England and 
take the throne. He was received at Dover with 
the wildest enthusiasm. Bonfires were lighted, 
and it was a continuous round of pleasure all the 
way from the channel to London. The Stuarts 
lacked a great deal of being ideal rulers, but they 
were always strong on one thing, and that was 
sarcasm. As the boot-lickers of all classes from 
lords to laborers crowded around the king to tell 
him how glad they were to see him, and how they 
were just dying to get him back, he remarked 
with characteristic Stuart sarcasm, “It must 
have been my own fault that I did not come back 
before, for I find no one but declares he is glad 
to see me,” 

Charles the Second has been characterized as 
“one of the most promising, lying, unprincipled, 
worthless, selfish and corrupting kings that ever 
sat on the throne of England.” The Edinburgh 
Review said of him that he superseded “the reign 
of the saints by the reign of strumpets; who was 
crowned in his youth with the Covenant in his 
hand, and died with the Host sticking in his 


JOHN BUNYAN 


39 


throat, after a life spent in dawdling suspense 
between Hobbism (atheism) and Popery.” But 
Charles knew what he wanted, and he wanted 
above all things to break down the power of 
Puritanism which had taken his father’s head, 
and sent him off a wanderer. The first thing he 
did was to break up the Parliamentary army, but 
he picked an overlarge “Swiss guard” of 5000 to 
guard his own precious skin, and to become the 
nucleus of a standing army which would oppose 
the Puritans, and, if necessary, “harry them out 
of the land.” 

An impartial historian says that the throne 
was in every way the exact opposite of Crom¬ 
well’s. Charles had no special love for England, 
and nothing but hardened cynicism regarding the 
goodness or virtue of men or women. For twelve 
years he had been an unwelcome wanderer in 
Continental Europe, and lived off the largesse 
thrown him by other sovereigns, as one would 
cast a collection of choice bones to a hungry dog. 
He considered he had had a hard time of it, and 
now he was in for a reign of pleasure. A writer of 
that time says he was “a good human, but a hard¬ 
hearted voluptuary.” The initial letters of the 
names of his chief advisors, five in number, Clif- 


40 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


ford, Ashley, Buckingham, Arlington and Laud¬ 
erdale, spelled out the word “cabal,” an under¬ 
ground political “ring,” which was brought into 
being by the new king. Charles’ choice com¬ 
panions were a bunch of libertines, and the royal 
palace became really a harem. 

Puritanism may have gone to the extreme 
in some petty matters regulating social conduct, 
but the so-called Restoration went the other way, 
and, encouraged by the example of the king and 
court, the flood of looseness was like that tall dam 
which broke in the St. Francis Canyon in Cali¬ 
fornia recently and wiped out all of the sur¬ 
rounding country. Folks just tried to see how 
bad they could be. They were not only after 
amusement but in some cases life became an 
orgy; this was especially true of the higher 
classes. The brute appeared under the thin 
veneering of civilization; the Anglo-Saxon can¬ 
not disguise it. 

You will recall that it was only three years 
after Charles came to the throne when Samuel 
Butler published his Hudibras, which was 
applauded to the echo at that time, and which 
was thought would live forever. The Puritans, 
headed by Bunyan’s old commander. Sir Thomas 


JOHN BUNYAN 


41 


Lake, who was Hudibras himself, were put in a 
poetic pillory, and the opinion of the so-called 
upper classes of that time was that the only thing 
a Puritan head was good for was to serve as a 
target for mud balls. However, nobody that we 
know of ever celebrated any of the anniversaries 
of the publication of the Hudibras, while Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress is world-wide honored three hun¬ 
dred years after the birth of its author. 

Before we leave the question of the reaction 
from Puritanism we should note this from Pepys’ 
diary (written in that time, and by no Puritan): 
“there were festivities in which lords and ladies 
smeared each other’s faces with candle grease and 
soot ’till most of us were like devils.” It was the 
fashion to swear, to relate scandalous adventures, 
to get drunk, to prate against the preachers and 
Scripture, and to gamble. There is much more 
in Pepys telling of bestial and unnatural vices 
which we cannot name here. A fairly conserva¬ 
tive authority of that time says that the Restora¬ 
tion brought with it the throwing off of every 
profession of virtue, and ended in illicit enter¬ 
tainments and sottish drunkenness which over¬ 
spread not only England but Scotland and Ire¬ 
land. The whole force of administration was put 


42 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


to work like a well oiled machine to demoralize 
the people. 

The first thing that Charles did was to pun¬ 
ish the members of the High Court of Justice 
which had sent his father to the block. Ten were 
executed; nineteen imprisoned for life; a good 
many others had gone to America, and others 
escaped soon afterwards. Our New England 
became a refuge from the royal wrath. 

Hanging Dead Bodies 

Then Charles was guilty of the puerile act 
of digging up the bodies of Oliver Cromwell, 
Ireton, Bradshaw and Pride, taking them from 
their graves in Westminster Abbey, and hanging 
them in chains at Tyburn, which, as you know, 
is near the entrance to Hyde Park, London, and 
is now the religious, political and social ganglion 
of the nation as far as the common people are 
concerned. Here anybody with a theory and a 
soap box, can talk his head off, and engage to 
the fullest in his right of free speech. It seems a 
little ironic to have hung (especially after they 
were dead) people who fought in the cause of 
human liberty, at a place like this; but the law of 


JOHN BUNYAN 


43 


poetic justice is always at work in the world, and 
seems to take delight in playing tricks on royal 
boneheads — as time has played the trick on 
Charles the Second. The next thing Charles did 
was to call a new Parliament, and pass laws 
establishing Episcopacy over all the realm. 

The Lay Preacher and 
His Rocky Road 

Bunyan was a lay preacher by this time. 
Soon after joining the Baptist church in Bedford 
in 1653 his wonderful gifts and graces were man¬ 
ifest. Not that he was perfect or had already 
attained thereto, for Jordan is a hard road to 
travel, and Bunyan had some rock roads and the 
Hill Difficulty still to negotiate. But he had had 
a wonderful experience; like Dante, he was the 
man who had seen hell, and he had done more 
than take a casual look at it. He had seen every 
inch of that highly advertised place where nobody 
cares to go, and had felt things few folks ever 
feel. He was drafted into the Parliamentary 
army, and he was drafted into the preaching 
army. He was drafted not because he did not 
want to preach but because he felt he was not 


44 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


good enough. But when the call came from the 
brethren of the local church he obeyed, and 
promised to do his best. 

But Bunyan was the kind of a man who 
wanted bedrock for a foundation, and an inward 
assurance without the shade of a doubt in it. You 
will recall in the Pilgrim that one of the men he 
has no use for is Ignorance. One of the quaint 
sub-heads he wrote when Ignorance argues with 
Hopeful and Christian is, “Ignorance jangles 
with them.” Bunyan wanted no jangling; noth¬ 
ing but a sure foundation would do. I imagine 
that when he as a tinker repaired a pot it was 
repaired right. He might have written these lines: 

“If I were a cobbler it would be my pride 
The best of all cobblers to be; 

If I were a tinker no tinker beside 
Should mend an old kettle like me.” 

If he had been an engineer he would have 
built on nothing except the solid rock; if he had 
built a bridge, a light-house, or a dam, it would 
have stayed built. Right at this point of preach¬ 
ing, without full assurance, Bunyan reminds us 
of another John—Wesley. It will be recalled 
that Wesley came over to Georgia from Eng- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


45 


land to preach, without very much assurance in 
his own soul. For several years he went through 
the motions and read the ritual, but when he met 
the leader of the Moravian community in Savan¬ 
nah, and was asked if he had the Witness within 
himself, and if the Spirit of God bore witness 
with his spirit, he could not answer. 

Bunyan preached for five years, and at the 
end of that time this is what he said: “I fulfilled 
with great sense: for the terrors of the law, and 
guilt for my transgressions lay heavy upon my 
conscience. I preached what I felt, what smart- 
ingly I did feel, even that, under which my poor 
soul did groan and tremble to astonishment. 
Indeed I have been as one sent to them from the 
dead. I went myself in chains to preach to them 
in chains; and carried that fire in my own con¬ 
science; that I persuaded them to be aware of. I 
can truly say, that when I have been to preach I 
have gone full of Guilt and Terror to the pulpit 
door; and then it hath been taken off, and I have 
been at liberty in my mind until I have done my 
work; and then immediately, even before I 
could get down the pulpit stairs, I have been as 
bad as I was before. Yet God carried me on; 


46 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


but surely with a strong hand, for neither guilt 
nor hell could take me off my work.” 

There was one thing about Bunyan’s preach¬ 
ing, however; he took it to the folks, and he oxy- 
gized it. He was out in the open air, in front of 
the town hall, on the commons, in the woods— 
everywhere; and he wasn’t making a living out 
of it, either. He was putting good metal for bad 
in pots and pans in the daytime, and metal into 
men’s souls at night, and several times on Sun¬ 
day. The political disturbances which were shap¬ 
ing his end, being used as instruments of divinity, 
were unrecognized by him. He was not a political 
preacher, and he was rods, chains and miles away 
from the notion of trying to work up new laws. 
The only time in his life he ever gave any advice 
to a ruler was in 1653, when he started as a lay 
preacher, and signed an address (with a lot of 
other folks) directed to Parliament regarding 
some local conditions in Bedford. They say he 
was rather a solid citizen at this time, and making 
a little money, and therefore his name meant 
something on the paper. 

As far as Bunyan was concerned he put no 
faith in princes. Charles the Second when he was 
a refugee over in Holland (still popular with 


JOHN BUNYAN 


47 


royal runaways) published the Declaration of 
Breda, which among other things had promised 
“liberty of conscience to all in religious matters 
as long as their views did not disturb the peace 
of the realm.” But Bunyan knew better. To Bun- 
yan this world was only a necessary evil, and 
folks were living in it just for one purpose—to 
get right with God, and so live that they would 
get to heaven. You cannot read his books with¬ 
out finding that out. So, right then, what kings 
and Parliaments promised, or did not, worried 
him very little. In a way all of this was going to 
affect Bunyan, affect him most profoundly. But 
the laws which kings made, God would judge 
them for. He would pray that Caesar might be 
righteous, but if he were not righteous he would 
still pray for him. 

At this time Bunyan’s greatest concern was 
his own character. A study of his life reveals 
that he was trying to fulfill all the law’s demands. 
He was a Christian, and yet some passages of 
Scripture were troubling him. He knew that the 
man who kept the law ninety-nine per cent, and 
yet failed in one point, was guilty of the whole. 
While he was a Christian he was not entirely 
free, and he was trying to add cubits to his spir- 


48 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


itual stature by taking thought. In spite of all 
this he was doing some writing at this time. He 
had published two small pamphlets: one against 
extreme Quaker mysticism; and now, in 1658, he 
published a sermon, based on the parable of the 
rich man and Lazarus, with the significant title, 
“A Few Sighs from Hell, or the Groans of a 
Damned Soul, and etc., by that poor and con¬ 
temptible servant of Jesus Christ, John Bunyan.” 

The active exercise of preaching will do a 
great deal for a man spiritually, and it will help 
settle his mind. If he is the right kind of a man 
and is desperately in earnest he can help to con¬ 
vert himself. It has been done; but a man has to 
be honest clean through to do it. And, with the 
help of the Lord, he can preach assurance into 
his own soul. Probably something like this hap¬ 
pened in the case of Bunyan, for we see in 
“Grace Abounding” that God sent the Holy 
Spirit to be a witness with his spirit that he was 
a child of God and had passed from death unto 
life; so when the order came for his arrest, in the 
fall of 1660, he was down to bedrock in his soul 
quest. 

Do not get the notion that John Bunyan 
went around with a chip on his shoulder, and 


JOHN BUNYAN 


49 


courted arrest. He was not trying to be a mar¬ 
tyr, although he was the stuff out of which mar¬ 
tyrs are made. As far as he was concerned he 
paid little attention to unjust law. He was 
called to preach the gospel, and as with St. Paul, 
it was a case of “Woe is me if I preach not the 
gospel.” Also, true disciple that he was, he would 
say with Peter and John, “It is better to obey 
God than man.” Of course he would have pre¬ 
ferred that he be left alone and allowed to 
preach; but if there was a notion that a man¬ 
made law could keep him from preaching,—well, 
it was so much the worse for the notion. The 
only people who had any effect on him were his 
own brethren, and he consented when they asked 
him to preach what they called a farewell ser¬ 
mon on the night he was arrested. 

Bunyan Arrested 

This last meeting was to be in a cottage in 
Lower Samsell. The people came from every¬ 
where in the neighborhood to the farmhouse 
which was in the middle of a meadow surrounded 
by large trees. It was just like the Apostolic 
Christians once again meeting in the house of a 


50 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


member. It is said that Bunyan got there a little 
early, and did what many a preacher does today: 
walked around the house out in the air, waiting 
for the people to get there. Some of the people, 
knowing the intense bitterness of the local 
authorities, thought that possibly he had better 
not preach; he was too valuable to be locked up. 
Like Paul, when the elders wept over him, he 
recognized the truth of what they were saying, 
and yet he refused to be turned back. He knew 
that if the shepherd was smitten the flock would 
flee; but he knew also that if the shepherd proved 
to be a coward they would all commit spiritual 
suicide. He had the spirit of that great man who 
did so much for him, Martin Luther, who, when 
advised not to go into Worms for fear of Duke 
George, said he would go into Worms if it rained 
Duke Georges for several days handrunning; so 
Bunyan likewise was not going to be turned back 
by a miniature Duke George in the person of an 
officious local justice. 

The meeting had just begun. Bunyan, 
after the prayer, had begun to preach to the peo¬ 
ple when the village constable and a local deputy 
came in, and, ordering Bunyan to stop, told him 
to come along quietly. Bunyan told the people 


JOHN BUNYAN 


51 


not to worry about him, as they were suffering 
persecution for righteousness sake, which was a 
whole lot better than being arrested for some real 
crime. The constable must have been of the type 
that believes that even a short sermon is too long. 
He grabbed Bunyan and hustled him off. 

Bunyan was led before the local justice, 
named Francis Wingate, of Harlington House. 
In studying the history of the Wingates I can¬ 
not get out of my head the term, “codfish aris¬ 
tocracy.” They belong to that to-be-pitied class 
of folk who believe that culture is like a coat of 
varnish; something that can be applied thick with 
a brush from the outside. They were not lords 
of the manor; they had few acres, but on one 
occasion Charles the Second had paid them a visit. 
They preserved the blue china this royal non-such 
ate on; in spirit, they encased it in a shrine and 
burned blue punk before it. Bunyan knew this 
Wingate, and knew that the Wingates had an 
ancient grudge long a-hungered and waiting to 
feed fat on the Dissenters. They were Royalists 
to the core; Wingate’s father had fought in the 
Royalist army, but the son was taken for safety 
to the King’s Quarters at Oxford by his mother. 


52 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Noncombatants are usually more bitter than 
combatants—especially after a war, and Wingate 
was just dying to do something mean. When 
Bunyan came before him for trial he was greatly 
disappointed to find that the folks gathered for 
the meeting were not armed. He opened ameni¬ 
ties by asking Bunyan why he did not mind his 
own business, meaning, of course, that his busi¬ 
ness was mending old pots. Bunyan told him that 
he could do that in the daytime and preach at 
night. Wingate got peeved at this, and told him 
that he would “break the neck of these meet- 
ings.” Bunyan was unruffled, and said very 
mildly, but we have no doubt with a gentle under¬ 
current of sarcasm, “Maybe”—which was about 
as good an answer as I think could be made. 

He Could Have 
Saved Himself 

Bunyan was bound over to the Sessions, 
three months hence, and while the justice went 
into another room to write out the order commit¬ 
ting Bunyan to jail, the vicar of Harlington 
came in to have some fun with Bunyan. He 
started in to abuse Bunyan, but the prisoner was 


JOHN BUNYAN 


53 


the calmest man in the lot. He pointedly told 
this officious outsider that he did not have any 
business with him right then; that he was there 
to see the justice. The vicar wanted to know if 
he could prove that he had a right to preach. 
Bunyan countered very neatly by saying that he 
had Scripture for it, quoting from the first 
Epistle of St. Peter, “As every man hath 
received the gift even so let him minister the 
same.” The vicar came back with a feeble 
attempt at sarcasm, asking Bunyan if he had 
heard of Alexander, a coppersmith, who dis¬ 
turbed Paul. Bunyan knew that his being a 
tinker was the cause of that remark. The vicar’s 
Countercheck Quarrelsome was neatly turned by 
Bunyan’s Retort Courteous when he asked the 
vicar if he recalled something in the gospels to 
the effect that the Scribes and Pharisees had 
their hands in the blood of the Lord Jesus. Just 
then a verse of Scripture flashed into Bunyan’s 
mind: “Answer not a fool according to his folly.” 
I have no doubt the vicar was intensely relieved 
—I would have been if I had crossed swords with 
John Bunyan and the Lord had whispered to him 
to be quiet and let me down easy. 



Drawn by Ralph Chessi 


Bunyan in Prison 






JOHN BUNYAN 


55 


Mr. Froude, who has written in some ways 
a splendid criticism on Bunyan, as far as schol¬ 
arship is concerned, makes light of his arrest, and 
at times seems put out with Bunyan for going to 
prison when he could have kept out by merely 
promising not to preach. But Mr. Froude never 
had a call to preach as St. Paul had, or Martin 
Luther, or John Bunyan. He had no great 
spiritual experience in his life. Sin had never 
swept like a sirocco over his soul, and he knew 
more of Piccadilly Circus and the pleasant quar¬ 
ters of Mayfair than he knew of the City of 
Destruction. He was a cultured and scholarly 
gentleman, a brilliant essayist, but no man can 
know John Bunyan unless he understands the 
spirit of John Bunyan, unless he has had in some 
measure the experience of John Bunyan. 

John Bunyan was not a reed shaken by the 
wind, not a man who wore soft raiment or dwelt 
in king’s houses hobnobbing with royalty. The 
people of his time doubtless did not understand 
John the Baptist, rough and straightforward and 
terribly in earnest; and to Mr. Froude, Bunyan 
is a voice crying in the wilderness where nobody 
can hear it, and where it will do no good. There 
is a tradition, and it may not be more than that, 


56 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


that John the Baptist could have saved his head 
if he had but consented to the caresses of Salome. 
Bunyan could have saved his life and lost it right 
at this critical moment. They even told him what 
to say; all he would have to do would be to 
indulge in a mental reservation and a little secret 
evasion of mind; but he refused to do it. 

It was probably November 13th, 1660, and 
Bunyan was at that time 32 years of age. The 
exact date of his birth is not known, but he was, 
as you know, baptized on November 30th, 1628, 
and he may have celebrated his birthday by going 
to jail. He was sentenced to what they call the 
Bedford county jail, to there wait for the Janu¬ 
ary Quarter Sessions. And so in January, 1661, 
Bunyan was haled before the county magistrates, 
five of them, sitting “en banc.” All of them were 
unanimous in their opinion that Noncomformists 
in general and Bunyan in particular were poison. 
A certain Sir John Kelynge (Bunyan called him 
“Kellin”) who afterwards became Lord Chief 
Justice, noted for his lack of law knowledge and 
his want of judicial temperament, presided. He 
had a record of browbeating witnesses and juries. 

I do not suppose that we have any notion 
today of some of those so-called courts of justice 


JOHN BUNYAN 


57 


in the seventeenth century. A writer of that time, 
not a Noncomformist, said that the courts were 
then little better than “caverns of murderers.” A 
picture of these courts where justice was “dis¬ 
pensed with” can be found in Hallam’s Constitu¬ 
tional History of England, and the worst picture 
of all is what followed later in the time of James, 
when the unspeakable Jefferys and the Bloody 
Assizes came upon the scene. Jefferys became 
high in the favor of the king, becoming Lord 
Chancellor, his portfolio punctuating with a 
bloody period a long sentence of crime against 
the helpless. In that day some judges browbeat 
prisoners, took their guilt for granted, insulted 
and silenced witnesses for their defense, and even 
cast juries into prison under penalties of heavy 
fine for venturing to bring in verdicts contrary 
to their wishes. It was nothing at all for a judge 
to give the miserable miscreant on trial before 
him “a lick with the rough side of his tongue,” 
preparatory to roaring out with lurid abuse and 
curses the sentence of torture or death. Court 
procedure has gone forward a few parasangs 
from that pitiful and perfervid period. 

The indictment against J ohn Bunyan, 
laborer, was that he had “devilishly and perti- 


58 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


naciously abstained from coming to church to 
hear divine service, and was a common upholder 
of unlawful meetings and conventicles to the 
great disturbance and distraction of the good sub¬ 
jects of this kingdom, contrary to the laws of our 
Sovereign Lord, the King.” Justice Kelynge 
acted as prosecuting attorney as well as judge. He 
asked Bunyan why he did not go to church, and 
Bunyan replied that he did go; he went to the 
Church of God, where he was a member and 
where Christ was the Head. This seemed to his 
judgeship worse than useless, and he wanted to 
know why Bunyan did not come to the parish 
church. Bunyan and the judge got to arguing 
about the Prayer-book. It was Bunyan’s opin¬ 
ion then, whether he expressed it at that time or 
not (as he did afterwards), that those who had 
the spirit of prayer.prayed without the book and 
were to be found in jail; while those who had the 
form of prayer and could not do without the book 
were found in the ale-houses. 

Tried and Imprisoned 

One of the justices, seeing that his colleague 
was getting the worst of it in the argument, 


JOHN BUNYAN 


59 


wanted to stop Bunyan, but Justice Kelynge 
told him not to worry, as the Prayer-book was in 
no danger, “having been ever since the Apostles’ 
time.” They asked Bunyan if Beelzebub was not 
his god; others said he was possessed of the devil. 
Bunyan began to quote Scripture, using it to 
interpret his belief, just as he did later in Pil¬ 
grim’s Progress, but they did not want any of 
that. They called it, “peddler’s French,” and 
“canting.” Then the presiding justice though 
inveighing against preaching, turned preacher 
himself, and said “As every man hath received 
the gift,” that is, as every man had received a 
trade, “so let him follow it.” He intimated that 
Bunyan’s trade was mending old pots, not med¬ 
dling with souls. Bunyan showed the justice that 
this was eisegesis, not exegesis, and that he ought 
to get the context, which referred to the oracles 
of God. 

The judge cut the matter short in anger, by 
asking Bunyan if he confessed to the indictment. 
He did not; but he was, nevertheless, remanded 
back to prison for three months. If at the end of 
that time he would not agree to go to church and 
quit preaching he was to be banished from Eng¬ 
land. If, after that banishment he was found in 


60 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


the country, without the royal privilege, he was 
to be hanged. As Bunyan was leaving for prison 
he turned to the justices and said quietly, “If I 
were out of prison today I would preach the 
gospel again tomorrow, by the help of God I” 
Bunyan preserved this scene in the amber of 
his intellect, and put a touch of humor in it to 
relieve its grimness when he described that court 
scene in Vanity Fair in the Pilgrim. We give 
you just a taste of it. One of the witnesses 
against Faithful, Mr. Pickthank, is speaking. 
We reproduce it in all of its terse and graphic wit. 

“When this Pickthank had told his tale the 
judge directed his speech to the prisoner at the 
bar, saying, ‘Thou runagate, heretic and traitor, 
hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have 
witnessed against thee?’ 

“Faithful. ‘May I speak a few words in my 
own defense?’ 

“Judge. ‘Sirrah, sirrah, thou deservest to live 
no longer but to be slain immediately upon the 
place; yet that all men may see our gentleness 
toward thee let us hear what thou hast to say.’ ” 
As Bunyan expressed it, on being delivered 
to the jailor’s hands, “I had home to prison 
again.” Things were breaking bad for the Dis- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


61 


senters at this time. Some Fifth Monarchy men 
who aimed at the subversion of all earthly gov¬ 
ernments, arguing that it was only a short time 
anyhow until the Fifth Monarchy be set up, 
broke loose in London under a leader named 
Thomas Venner, and started a riot. They were 
arrested, and the English government took it as 
a good excuse to put the screws literally and 
figuratively to the Dissenters. This made it 
harder on Bunyan in prison, but he put the situ¬ 
ation in a nutshell when he showed that it was no 
argument against his preaching at a peaceable 
gathering. “Thieves might come out of the wood, 
but all men coming out of the wood are not 
thieves.” Several well-meaning folks went to 
Bunyan in jail and argued with him. They told 
him he was in danger of being transported, and 
possibly worse than that might happen. They 
urged him to do the little that was required of 
him—just drop into church once on Sunday, and 
if he must preach why preach to individuals. 

But sham never got very far with John 
Bunyan. He hated it with all his soul, and you 
can see that with every turn of the road in the 
Pilgrim. You remember Formalist and Hypoc¬ 
risy, and Mr. Legality, Mr. Facing-both-ways, 


60 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


the country, without the royal privilege, he was 
to be hanged. As Bunyan was leaving for prison 
he turned to the justices and said quietly, “If I 
were out of prison today I would preach the 
gospel again tomorrow, by the help of God!” 

Bunyan preserved this scene in the amber of 
his intellect, and put a touch of humor in it to 
relieve its grimness when he described that court 
scene in Vanity Fair in the Pilgrim. We give 
you just a taste of it. One of the witnesses 
against Faithful, Mr. Pickthank, is speaking. 
We reproduce it in all of its terse and graphic wit. 

“When this Pickthank had told his tale the 
judge directed his speech to the prisoner at the 
bar, saying, ‘Thou runagate, heretic and traitor, 
hast thou heard what these honest gentlemen have 
witnessed against thee?’ 

“Faithful. ‘May I speak a few words in my 
own defense?’ 

“Judge. ‘Sirrah, sirrah, thou deservest to live 
no longer but to be slain immediately upon the 
place; yet that all men may see our gentleness 
toward thee let us hear what thou hast to say.’ ” 
As Bunyan expressed it, on being delivered 
to the jailor’s hands, “I had home to prison 
again.” Things were breaking bad for the Dis- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


61 


senters at this time. Some Fifth Monarchy men 
who aimed at the subversion of all earthly gov¬ 
ernments, arguing that it was only a short time 
anyhow until the Fifth Monarchy be set up, 
broke loose in London under a leader named 
Thomas Venner, and started a riot. They were 
arrested, and the English government took it as 
a good excuse to put the screws literally and 
figuratively to the Dissenters. This made it 
harder on Bunyan in prison, but he put the situ¬ 
ation in a nutshell when he showed that it was no 
argument against his preaching at a peaceable 
gathering. “Thieves might come out of the wood, 
but all men coming out of the wood are not 
thieves.” Several well-meaning folks went to 
Bunyan in jail and argued with him. They told 
him he was in danger of being transported, and 
possibly worse than that might happen. They 
urged him to do the little that was required of 
him—just drop into church once on Sunday, and 
if he must preach why preach to individuals. 

But sham never got very far with John 
Bunyan. He hated it with all his soul, and you 
can see that with every turn of the road in the 
Pilgrim. You remember Formalist and Hypoc¬ 
risy, and Mr. Legality, Mr. Facing-both-ways, 


62 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Mr. Anything, and a good many others. Bunyan 
said to one of these Job’s comforters, “Sir, the 
law hath provided two ways of obeying: the one 
to do that which I in my conscience do believe 
that I am bound to do actively; and where I can¬ 
not obey actively then I am willing to lie down 
and suffer what they shall do unto me.” 

Let no one believe that Bunyan liked being 
in jail; no man in his senses would. Again the 
very highly cultured Mr. Froude argues that the 
life of a man in jail in England at that time was 
not such an unhappy one, and that jail life was 
almost like living at home. I am beginning to 
believe that Mr. Froude never even saw the 
inside of an English jail. Even today they are 
different from American jails in that they have 
none of the earmarks of our better country clubs. 
A century after Bunyan lay in Bedford jail 
John Howard, the great prison reformer, who, 
by the way, was later a member of the Bunyan 
church in Bedford, found a whole lot of things 
in English prisons which would not be permitted 
in a first class hotel. 

The jail at Bedford was crowded with Dis¬ 
senters, and they say that the “menage” was lim¬ 
ited as to funds in caring for the guests. The 


JOHN BUNYAN 


63 


average jail was allowed about twenty-five dol¬ 
lars a year to provide bedding, so they bought 
straw, and thus did they invest in rest. There was 
another drawback about going to jail then: the 
only thing they provided was room; board was 
not included; you had to feed yourself, and this 
looks to me a little like adding insult to injury. 
They say that even some of the homes in Eng¬ 
land at that time were so overrun with vermin 
that people would have to move out for a season 
to let the vermin die of starvation, and allow the 
house to “sweeten.” Typhus was common in jails, 
and so was the cholera. 

The Mettle of the Man 

Besides all this Bunyan had a wife and four 
children dependent on him. His first wife had 
died two years before, and his four children were 
by this wife, all of them young and helpless. The 
oldest was a girl, born blind, whom Bunyan loved 
as the very apple of his eye. His second wife he 
had married a little over a year before, and she 
was with child when he was arrested. The news 
of his arrest was such a shock to her that she 
miscarried, and for nearly three weeks was at the 


64 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


point of death. More than that, to add to his 
anxiety, Bunyan expected to be hanged, and yet 
he could only bury his face in his hands and say 
with the tears streaming down his face, “I must, 
I must.” To show you the mettle of the man 
(and this is worth preserving forever) we quote 
his own words when he was sent to prison: 

“I saw what was coming, and had two con¬ 
siderations especially in my heart—how to be able 
to endure should my imprisonment be long and 
tedious, and how to be able to encounter death 
should that be my portion. I was made to see 
that if I would suffer rightly I must pass sen¬ 
tence of death upon everything that can properly 
be called a thing of this life, even to reckon 
myself, my wife, my children, my health, my 
enjoyments, all as dead to me, and myself as dead 
to them. 

“Yet I was a man compassed with infirm¬ 
ities. The parting from my wife and poor chil¬ 
dren hath often been to me in this place (the 
prison in which he was writing) as the pulling of 
my flesh from my bones; and that not only 
because I am too, too fond of those great mercies, 
but also because I should have often brought to 
my mind the hardships, miseries and wants my 


JOHN BUNYAN 


65 


poor family was like to meet with should I be 
taken from them, especially my poor, blind child, 
who lay nearer my heart than all I had besides. 
Poor child, thought I, what sorrow art thou like 
to have for thy portion in this world! Thou must 
be beaten, suffer hunger, cold, nakedness, and a 
thousand calamities, though I cannot now endure 
the wind should blow on thee. 

“But yet, thought I, I must venture all with 
God, though it goeth to the quick to leave you. 
I was a man who was pulling down his house 
upon the head of his wife and children. Yet, 
thought I, I must do it—I must do it. I had this 
for consideration, that if I should now venture all 
for God, I engaged God to take care of all my 
concernments. Also, I had dread of the torments 
of hell, which I was sure they must partake of 
that for fear of the cross do shrink from their 
profession. I had this much upon my spirit, that 
my imprisonment might end in the gallows for 
aught I could tell. 

“In the condition I now was in I was not fit 
to die, nor indeed did I think I could if I should 
be called to do it. I feared I might show a weak 
heart, and give occasion to the enemy. This lay 
with great trouble on me, for methought I was 


66 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering 
knees for such a cause as this. The things of God 
were kept out of my sight. The tempter followed 
me with, ‘But whither must you go when you die ? 
What will become of you? What evidence have 
you for heaven and glory and an inheritance 
among them that are sanctified?* 

“Thus was I tossed many weeks; but I felt 
it was for the Word and Way of God that I was 
in this condition. God might give me comfort or 
not as he pleased. I was bound, but he was free 
—yea, it was my duty to stand to his Word, 
whether he would ever look upon me or no, or 
save me at the last. Wherefore, thought I, the 
point being thus, I am for going on and ventur¬ 
ing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have 
comfort here or no. If God does not come in, 
thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blind¬ 
fold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, 
come hell. Now was my heart full of comfort.” 
When it comes to devoted consecration, match 
John Bunyan if you can. 

This second wife of John Bunyan, Eliza¬ 
beth, was the type of a woman on which you 
could build a great nation. I am pretty strongly 
of the opinion that it would not hurt this country 


JOHN BUNYAN 


67 


at all to have a great many Elizabeth Bunyans. 
She was a young woman, but you can see right 
away that she had in her the stuff that ought to 
cause the people of England to preserve her 
memory forever with a statue in enduring bronze 
right next to the man she loved so much. Con¬ 
sider this: she loved her step-children! Her devo¬ 
tion to these children and to her husband was 
beautiful. She never sought for a moment to 
have her husband compromise or stultify himself, 
or do violence to his conscience. She was willing 
to work her fingers to the bone to feed his chil¬ 
dren, and she did everything in her power to have 
him released without compromising him. 

A Woman as Brave and Dauntless 
as Her Husband 

Let no one believe for a moment that this 
fine, young, but poor woman, beautiful in face 
and in spirit, though unlettered in books, was 
anybody’s fool or could not hold her own, even 
when arguing with the Lord Chief Justice him¬ 
self. A little while after Bunyan was arrested 
the Midsummer Assize was held in Bedford. 
Judges Twisdon and Chester and Sir Matthew 



Drawn by Ralph Chessi 


Elizabeth Bunyan 
at the Prison Gate 








JOHN BUNYAN 


69 


Hale, the Lord Chief Justice, came. Bunyan 
wanted to get a new hearing in open court, and 
his wife tried three times to get the judges to 
consent. 

Twice she presented the case to Sir Matthew 
alone, and once to all the judges. Her argument 
with these judges shows that she wielded a won¬ 
derful verbal rapier, fighting alone against three 
judges, although Sir Matthew Hale saw her side 
of the case, and at times tried to help her. On one 
occasion Hale asked her what was her husband’s 
calling. You get a slant on the crowd in court 
who were listening in when the people called out, 
“A tinker, my lord.” And consider her answer: 
“And because he is a tinker and a poor man 
therefore he is despised and cannot have justice” 
—which reminds us that it is still as hard for poor 
folks to get justice as it is to convict a million 
dollars. 

During the course of the argument Eliza¬ 
beth was so brilliant that Judges Chester and 
Twisdon got mad, and began to insult her. At 
the close of the argument Twisdon said that Bun- 
yan’s doctrine was of the devil. The reply of 
Elizabeth Bunyan was logical, and a queen could 
not have expressed herself better. She said, turn- 


70 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


ing to Hale, who was the only one who seemed 
to have any mercy in his heart, “My lord, when 
the righteous Judge shall appear, it will be 
known that his doctrine is not the doctrine of the 
devil. ,, Twisdon got mad at this, and urged Hale 
to send her away, and Hale said something in 
closing which bears on Bunyan’s imprisonment, 
showing the legal side of the case and also the 
heart of the judge: “I am sorry, woman, that I 
cannot do thee any good; thou must do one of 
those three things aforesaid, namely: either to 
apply thyself to the king, or sue out his pardon, 
or get a writ of error; hut a writ of error will be 
the cheapest.” 

I am tempted to believe that this good 
woman, as brave and as dauntless as her cele¬ 
brated husband, furnished nine-tenths of the 
moral support he received from any mortal while 
he was in prison. She made it easier for him to 
endure as seeing Him who is invisible. 

Six Years in Prison 

In the spring of 1662 Bunyan made strenu¬ 
ous efforts to have his case brought before the 
spring Assizes, but the local justices saw to it 


JOHN BUNYAN 


71 


that his name did not appear, and so he remained 
in prison. Bunyan served six years in this first 
imprisonment. He was honored by being the first 
Dissenter to suffer for his faith. Minnows were 
safe; the king and his henchmen at the beginning 
were out after whales, and the biggest one in all 
these troubled political and theological waters 
was John Bunyan. 

Bunyan helped to support his family by 
making long tagged shoe laces, which were 
peddled on the outside by hawkers. It is to be 
presumed also that some of his friends helped his 
family, although he says very pathetically in one 
place, that the children were left to beg. In one 
point the joke was on the government: Bunyan 
was arrested for preaching in the open, but there 
were at least sixty Dissenters in this little two- 
story jail, and so Bunyan organized a church, 
and preached in jail. The Dissenters living in the 
town or in the regions roundabout, when they 
wanted to worship with each other, would have 
to sneak out in the woods at the dead of night, 
preach in undertones, and hardly raise their voices 
in song for fear of being heard by some “infor¬ 
mer”; but here in the prison they could preach 


72 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


and pray and sing to their hearts’ content, and 
there was none to molest or make afraid. 

There was one mitigation in the imprison¬ 
ment of John Bunyan, and that was the jailor, 
evidently a rare character for that time. Possibly 
he secretly sympathized with the Dissenters, and 
felt sorry for his prisoners; jailors often do, 
because they know what is going on, and they 
know some folks are in jail who ought to be on 
the outside. It is not hard to believe that a man 
who had even a little bit of fairness in his soul 
and a little of the milk of human kindness in his 
system could meet John Bunyan and not like 
him—not feel but that it was an outrage to have 
a man like him in jail, simply because he would 
not go to a certain church, and he wanted to 
preach. Even in that day, amid all the turmoil 
and prejudice and blindness, that sense of Brit¬ 
ish justice would occasionally come to the surface 
for air, as it did in the case of this jailer. 

Every jail must have a few “trusties,” and 
so John Bunyan was made a trusty, although the 
English did not call it that. In the first six years 
imprisonment, 1660 to 1666 , Bunyan was often 
allowed to go home for a few hours and visit his 
family. In some cases he was even given leave to 


JOHN BUNYAN 


73 


go to London. It is said that on one occasion he 
was given permission to stay over night, but he 
no sooner got home than he had an inward 
prompting to get back to the prison. Just as he 
got back and reported to the jailor a messenger 
came from one of the local justices asking if all 
the prisoners were in, and especially if John Bun- 
yan was there. Some would call this a “hunch” 
or an intuition, but I am old-fashioned enough 
to believe that the steps of a good man are 
ordered of the Lord. John Bunyan lived so close 
to God that they could talk to each other, even 
in whispers. 


The Plague Breaks Out 
in London 

Bunyan’s first prison term ran the six years 
—1660, the year Charles the Second came to the 
throne, until 1666. He was in prison because he 
did not attend worship in the Established Church, 
and because he preached. Other severe laws were 
passed, and followed each other in quick succes¬ 
sion, making it decidedly uncomfortable for the 
Dissenters. For instance, the Corporation Act 
made it obligatory on all holders of municipal 


74 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


offices to renounce the Covenant which the Puri¬ 
tans of England and Scotland had taken 
together, and compelled them to publicly take the 
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper at a service of 
the Church of England. Then the so-called Act 
of Uniformity enforced the use of the Book of 
Common Prayer upon all clergymen and congre¬ 
gations; and as if this was not enough, the Con¬ 
venticle Act, was passed, which forbade all reli¬ 
gious assemblies whatever, except such as wor¬ 
shipped according to the Established Church. 
But so strong was that undercurrent of revolt 
throughout the country that something else was 
needed to “haud the wretches in order,” and the 
Five Mile Act was passed, forbidding all Dis¬ 
senting ministers from teaching in schools or 
settling within five miles from any incorporated 
town. 

It is said that two thousand dissenting 
clergymen were driven out of their pulpits 
between sunup and sundown, and chased out of 
the towns they were living in by this last Act. 
The young and husky might work with pick and 
shovel for a living, but the older ones could beg. 
To resist one of these brutal, intolerant, senseless 
and unjust laws was punishable by heavy fines, 


JOHN BUNYAN 


75 


imprisonment or deportation, which meant vir¬ 
tual slavery. Men were sent to the British 
colonies in the Indies to work in the swamps and 
die under the burning sun, simply because they 
could not pronounce “shibboleth.” Some Dissen¬ 
ters were sent to Virginia as slaves, political 
slaves but freemen in heart and conscience, and 
they gave a transfusion of rich, red blood to this 
young country. 

A strange catastrophe happened while Bun- 
yan was serving this first six year term. In 1665 
the plague broke out in London. Everyone who 
could even crawl out of the town got out. Par¬ 
liament, the King, and his court and courtesans 
got out post-haste. Somehow they got the notion 
in their heads that they were worth saving, and 
they fled to Oxford, where Parliament and the 
king set up shop. Folks were dying in London 
like flies. It is said that a hundred thousand 
people died in six months. Mr. Pepys wrote 
in his diary on the 7th of June, 1665, that it 
was the hottest day he ever felt in his life. “This 
day, much against my will, I did in Drury Lane 
see two or three houses with a red cross upon the 
door, and ‘Lord have mercy upon us’ writ there, 
which was a sad sight.” Among the brave men 


76 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


who remained in the stricken city were the 
despised Dissenters, who nursed the sick, con¬ 
soled the dying, and with their own hands buried 
the dead, though courting death at every step of 
the road. As a reward for this they were per¬ 
secuted harder than ever. 

In 1666 the plague had hardly died out 
before a terrible fire visited London. Someone 
who saw it said that it “was not to be outdone 
until the final conflagration.” The city of Lon¬ 
don, built of wood, was burned to the ground with 
the exception of a few houses in the northeast 
section. It is said that the advisors of Charles 
really delighted in the burning of the city, and 
saw in it an opportunity to crush without serious 
opposition the already harrassed Dissenters. 

In Jail Again 

This was the temper of the times when Bun- 
yan was released in 1666. He was out of prison 
one day, and did what he said he would do— 
preached the next day. As soon as the local 
authorities could get the goods on him they set the 
legal machinery in motion, and in a few weeks 
he was back for his second imprisonment, which 


JOHN BUNYAN 


77 


lasted another six years, until 1672. He was 
at liberty from ’72 to ’75, when he was again im¬ 
prisoned, but only for six months. He did a 
world of writing in his first imprisonment, not 
so much in his second, and wrote his greatest 
book, the Pilgrim’s Progress, in the third im¬ 
prisonment. I will tell you all about it in the 
next section. 


























































. 
















. 




















































* 
























The Tinker 
and His Thoughts 

I know the popular conception is that John 
Bunyan put his hand on his brow one day, and 
said to himself, “Go to, now, we will produce a 
great book, ,, and then wrote Pilgrim’s Progress. 
Hardly. While I believe that the Pilgrim’s 
Progress had as large a measure of inspiration 
as any book ever written, I know that Bunyan 
learned how to write by writing through the 
years. He tried his prentice-hand on more than 
two score books before he took his pen in hand 
to give the world this most delightful allegory. 

John Bunyan was a writing man, and 
although he had learned nothing in the school of 
Aristotle or Plato; had never taken English IV, 
nor the “elements of poetics”; and could not 
spell for green apples, as we shall see later, he 
took to writing just as naturally as Lindbergh 
gravitated toward a business where he could defy 
the laws of gravitation. 

While I do not recommend it, the jail was 
where John Bunyan learned to write. He did not 


80 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


spend all of his time in writing, to be sure, but 
after he got through working on shoe strings he 
took the curse off his imprisonment by reading 
and writing. His library consisted of the Bible 
and Fox’s Book of Martyrs. It is said that the 
latter was in three volumes, folio, with Bunyan’s 
name written large on the separate title pages. 
He did something that was common in that day, 
and wrote comments on the side of the text. 

Someone said that Bunyan must have had a 
concordance in jail because of his numerous exact 
quotations from the Bible;but Bunyan swallowed 
the Bible in more ways than one, and, like the 
man in the Apocalypse who ate the book, it 
became very sweet in his system. He knew the 
Bible from cover to cover, and the Word was not 
only hid in his heart but ingrained in the cells of 
his brain and pulsing in his finger tips. Like 
John Buskin, who was brought up on the Bible, 
it gave him a wonderful writing style. There is 
something in the Book which makes a man, after 
a while, put down his ideas in ink. 

When “The Heavenly Footman” was 
printed in 1698, ten years after Bunyan’s death, 
the printer published as an appendix a chrono¬ 
logical list of Bunyan’s works. This shows that 


JOHN BUNYAN 


81 


Bunyan began writing in 1656. His first was not 
a very large work (about a good sized pamphlet) 
and it has, as was the custom in that day, a very 
topheavy title. It was labeled, “Some Gospel 
Truths opened according to the Scriptures, or 
the Divine and Human Nature of Jesus Christ; 
His coming into the World; His Righteousness, 
Death, Resurrection, Ascension, Intercession, 
and Second Coming to Judgment, plainly dem¬ 
onstrated and proved; and also Answers to Sev¬ 
eral Questions, with profitable Directions to 
stand fast in the Doctrine and the Son of Mary 
against those blusterous Storms of the Devil’s 
Temptations, which at this day, like so many 
Scorpions break loose from the Bottomless Pit, 
to bite and torment those that have not tasted the 
Virtue of Jesus, by the Revelation of the Spirit 
of God. Published for the good of God’s Chosen 
Ones, by that Unworthy Servant of Christ, John 
Bunyan of Bedford, by the Grace of God 
Preacher of the Gospel of His Dear Son; Job. 
14:6. Acts 4:12.” At the beginning of his writ¬ 
ing life he produced more than a dozen titles and 
as topheavy as this one. 

In 1657 some Quakers came to Bedford, 
preaching their doctrine to the people. Bunyan 


82 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


heard them and was terribly stirred up. Espe¬ 
cially did he take offense at the preaching of 
Edward Burroughs, the chief Quaker preacher, 
whom he calls in the title of the pamphlet he 
wrote against Quakerism, “a professed Quaker, 
(but proved an enemy to the truth) 

His Head in the Clouds but His 
Feet on Solid Ground 

Like all great saints there was a good deal 
of mysticism in Bunyan’s makeup; but while his 
head was often in the clouds his feet were on 
solid ground. The ethereal mysticism of the 
Quakers was too much for him, and that little 
pamphlet has a message for these times. Jesus 
Christ is, according to Bunyan, true man as well 
as true God. He is the Son of Mary, and though 
being in the form of God and dwelling in heaven 
he thought it not a prize to be clutched at to 
remain equal with God, but took upon himself 
the form of man, became incarnate in the flesh, 
born of the Virgin Mary, though conceived by 
the Holy Ghost. He grew as a flesh and blood 
boy, became hungry and tired, had nowhere to 
lay his head, endured the contradiction of sinners. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


83 


was crucified, dying on the cross for the sins of 
the world. And we are saved by his blood and 
by his death in an atonement no one else could 
make. We are not simply saved by his teaching, 
but by his sacrifice on the cross; and this is no 
mere phantom, mystical Christ, but a Christ who 
was also in the form of his brethren in the flesh. 

In 1658, while Bunyan was preaching and 
yet torn with doubts, he published a remarkable 
pamphlet called, “Sighs from Hell; or the 
Groans of a Damned Soul.” He based his story 
on the sixteenth chapter of Luke—the story of 
Dives and Lazarus. Bunyan in his preface says 
that he writes it to “fitly serve as a warning word 
to sinners, both old and young, by faith in Jesus 
Christ to avoid the same place of Torment; with 
a discovery of the usefulness of the Scriptures 
as our safe Conduct for the avoiding the tor¬ 
ments of Hell.” A queer coincidence occurred at 
this time. As the pamphlet was published near 
the time of the death of Cromwell someone asked 
as to whether the advertisement of the book was 
a mere accident or the announcement of some 
Royalist trying to be funny. This was the first 
of his writings that ever got over a first edition. 


84 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


When the list was printed in 1698 this work had 
run through nine printings. 

You will note that Bunyan was writing a 
booklet a year. It was probably just before his 
arrest in 1660 that he wrote “The Doctrine of the 
Law and Grace Unfolded, or a Discourse Touch¬ 
ing the Law and Grace.” This is another long 
title running over a hundred words, and giving 
practically the contents of the thesis. He goes 
into the nature of law and grace, showing they 
are the two Covenants. And then for the help of 
the reader, in the back of the pamphlet there are 
questions and answers on law and grace. Of 
course it is really a sermon, and based on 
Hebrews 7:19; Romans 3:28; Romans 4:5. This 
was his longest work up to then; about 23 sheets 
in octavo, and on the title page there is this 
superscription, “Published by that Poor, Con¬ 
temptible Preacher, John Bunyan of Bedford.” 

Centuries Ahead of His Times 

In 1660 Bunyan was put in Bedford jail, 
and in 1661 the first book of his imprisonment 
appeared. It was titled, “Profitable Meditations 
Fitted to Man’s Different Conditions, in a Con- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


85 


ference between Christ and a Sinner; in nine 
Particulars. By John Bunyan, Servant of the 
Lord Jesus.” It is said that this book, published 
in quarto, and (for the times) handsomely 
printed, is now in the British Museum. It is in 
poetical dialogue, and is supposed to be a con¬ 
versation between Satan and a tempted soul. 
Bunyan probably used some of this material in 
the conflict between Christian and Apollyon. 

His next book was in ’63, “I Will Pray with 
the Spirit and the Understanding also.” It is a 
discourse concerning prayer, and he divides it in 
true preacher fashion thus: “What Prayer Is; 
What it Is to Pray with the Spirit; What it Is to 
Pray with the Spirit and the Understanding 
Also.” The same year he published “Christian 
Behavior; a Map Shewing the Order and Causes 
of Salvation and Damnation.” 

His next pamphlet was, “The Four Last 
things: Death and Judgment, Heaven and 
Hell.” This was in verse. Two other small works 
in verse followed: “Mount Ebel and Gerrizem; 
or the Blessings and the Cursings,” and “Prison 
Meditations”—about a half sheet. 

In 1665 his most pretentious book up to that 
time, “The Holy City, or the New Jerusalem” 


86 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


was printed. It is said that this book had its 
origin in a prison sermon. Bunyan, in the sub¬ 
title of the book, says he “will show wherein its 
goodly light, walls, gates, angels and the manner 
of their standing are expounded.” He knows his 
limitations, and in the preface, which is addressed 
to “four sorts of readers,” he opines that the 
learned readers will bite their thumbs at him 
because neither in line or margin has he a cloud 
of sentences from learned fathers. 

The reference to writing in the margin, or 
“margent” as he expressed it, is interesting as it 
reveals a custom of the times. In the early edi¬ 
tions of the Pilgrim’s Progress Bunyan wrote 
some very interesting margins, proving that if he 
were living today he could get a job on a news¬ 
paper writing “heads.” He naively states that he 
has neither the inclination nor the ability to write 
learned sentences. The “Holy City” treads on 
dangerous ground in that it is an exposition of 
the vision of the New Jerusalem given in Revela¬ 
tions, chapters 14-21. To him the New Jerusa¬ 
lem is not in the beyond; it is not the Church 
Triumphant so much as the Church Militant. He 
anticipated Blake’s poem about bringing the 
New Jerusalem down to the green-commons of 


JOHN BUNYAN 


87 


England. This work is expressed in language 
typically Bunyanesque, reminding us of some of 
the quaintest passages of the Pilgrim’s Progress. 
Note this: “Then will all the spiders and 
dragons and owls and foul spirits of Anti¬ 
christ be brought to light, and all the pretty 
robins and little birds in the Lord’s field most 
sweetly send forth their pleasant notes, and all 
the flowers and herbs of his garden spring.” 

In this book Bunyan shows a remarkable 
breadth of mind, being hundreds of years ahead 
of his time. No wonder all denominations are 
vying with each other in celebrating the tercen¬ 
tenary of his birth. Baptist though he was (and 
he has cast a luster on the name Baptist) he 
belongs to us all, as well as those noble Baptists 
who, throughout their history, have been pioneers 
in the fight for religious liberty. In the “Holy 
City” Bunyan goes on to say that on the founda¬ 
tions of the New Jerusalem are written the 
names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb 
because it is their Doctrine that holds up the wall. 
The right preacher is the one who can preach this 
Doctrine of the Lamb as the Twelve preached it. 

In England at that time the Prelatical hated 
the Papist, and they both hated the Quaker and 


88 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


the Independent; and the Presbyterians and the 
Anabaptists hated each other and all the rest of 
them, just as the others hated each other. In 
other words, among the various sects in England 
at that time there was a constant crossfire of 
hate, and a militant believer hit a head wherever 
he saw it. But Bunyan saw that not any one of 
them had a monopoly on salvation. He naively 
says that there is only one street in the Holy 
City, and that all the saints walk in one way and 
in one light. It is Antichrist that brought in all 
the crossings, by-lanes and odd nooks. 

Here, as everywhere, Bunyan preaches the 
doctrine that salvation is a matter between the 
soul of man and God; and that it is what we are 
ourselves when we are alone with God that 
counts. Every man has to go through the River 
of Death alone, and it is the individual that 
will stand alone before the judgment bar of God, 
with no priest or preacher at his side to aid him 
to give an account for the deeds done in the body. 
He says that men must have pure hearts for that 
golden street; just as a clown with his dirty, 
clumping shoes is not admitted into the king’s 
private chambers, so it is only golden men with 


JOHN BUNYAN 


89 


golden hearts and golden shoes who shall be 
admitted into the Holy City. 

Stone Walls and Iron Bars 
Do Not a Prison Make 

In the same year Bunyan published two 
other books: “The Resurrection of the Dead,” 
discussing the question of the resurrection body, 
and adding a discourse on the last judgment and 
the end of the world. He wrote also a poetic 
work entitled, “Prison Meditations: Dedicated to 
the Heart of Suffering Saints and Reigning 
Sinners: by John Bunyan, in prison, 1665.” 
Sometimes I question whether some folks ought 
to sing that hymn of Faber’s, especially the sec¬ 
ond stanza, which goes, 

“Our fathers, chained in prison dark, 

Were still in heart and conscience free: 

How sweet would be their children’s fate, 

If they, like them, could die for thee!” 

I am merely saying what we all know and 
confess: it is a little strange to hear people who 
haven’t enough iron in their religious blood to 
make a carpet tack, and who fall in a faint at the 


90 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


very thought of death, singing about how sweet 
it is to die for a conviction. But Bunyan in this 
poetic work proves that stone walls and iron bars 
do not a prison make. We get a flash of his mind 
as he lay in Bedford jail in the following: 

“For though men keep my outward man 
Within their bolts and bars, 

Yet, by the faith of Christ, I can 
Mount higher than the stars. 

“Here dwells good conscience, also peace, 
Here be my garments white; 

Here, though in bonds, I have release 
From guilt, which else would bite. 

“The Truth and I, were both here cast 
Together, and we do 

Lie arm in arm, and so hold fast 
Each other: this is true.” 

It is worth going to jail to be able to write a 
poem like that, and to have such a spirit. Bun¬ 
yan was superior to his surroundings. A good 
many of us would have died of a broken heart to 
be shut up for several years in a seventeenth 
century English jail, but Bunyan had the same 


JOHN BUNYAN 


91 


comfort that St. Paul had when he was in the 
Mamertine prison, and got it from the same 
source, and should say, like Paul, and with a 
world of meaning, “I have learned in whatsoever 
state I am therewith to be content.” 

When Bunyan was just a little over five 
years in jail, in ’66, he wrote one of his greatest 
books, “Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sin¬ 
ners.” It is said that every man has a book in 
his system, and if he has lived with any adven¬ 
ture at all he can just dive down into his subcon¬ 
sciousness, grab up in his two hands the acts of 
his life, and come up with a book. Bunyan did 
this when he was five and a quarter years in 
prison, “waiting to see what God will suffer 
these men to do with me.” In “Grace Abound¬ 
ing to the Chief of Sinners” he gave us a remark¬ 
able autobiography, more graphic than even 
Wesley’s journal. He draws back the curtain 
and lets us see his whole life. 

This is a book every lover of Bunyan ought 
to read. He tells of his boyhood, his wonderful 
find of Luther’s “Galatians,” and his love for his 
wife and children,—especially his blind child. He 
tells of his soul struggles, and, while admitting 
his swearing and Sabbath breaking, he defends 


92 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


himself stoutly from the vile calumny that was 
heaped upon him in latter life by those who were 
jealous of him. He reiterates that he was clean, 
as far as unchastity was concerned, from his 
youth up. As a spiritual autobiography compe¬ 
tent critics rank it alongside of Augustine’s Con¬ 
fessions. I regard Bunyan as better than the 
Bishop of Hippo in that he is a good deal more 
natural, simple and direct in his style. 

Shortly after this book was written he was 
released from prison. How long he was out we 
do not know, but we know it was not very long. 
One of his contemporaries says, “A little after 
his release they took him again at a meeting, and 
put him in the same jail, where he lay six years 
more.” Bunyan was just getting ready to preach. 
He says, “The subject I should have preached 
on even then when the constable came was: Dost 
thou believe on the Son of God?” Bunyan made 
good on his promise when first arrested, when he 
told the judges that if they released him one day 
he would preach the next. I wonder if we could 
not do today with a little of the constancy of 
John Bunyan? Here was a man who stood four¬ 
square to all the winds that blew when he knew 
he was right. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


93 


During his second imprisonment possibly 
only one book was written; only one was printed, 
according to his biographers. There was a reason. 
Dr. Brown, his most voluminous biographer, who 
was in the line of succession as minister of the 
church at Bunyan Meeting, Bedford, for twenty 
years, says that at that time Bunyan’s publisher 
could not get his books licensed. Evidently Bun¬ 
yan’s works, though non-political and highly 
spiritual, were anathema to the authorities, 
because they hated him and were afraid of his 
influence. His London publisher, Mr. Francis 
Smith, says that just before the great fire of 
London in ’66, the censor of the press visited his 
printing office and carried off a good many of 
Bunyan’s books. 

King Charles in a Terrible Stew 

Of course King Charles was in a terrible 
stew in those days. Within the royal palace his 
mistresses, if we may accept the word of Mr. 
Pepys and others, were giving him a good deal 
of trouble, aijd on the outside there was a great 
deal of discontent. It will be recalled that Hol¬ 
land established a colony on Manhattan Island 


94 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


at the mouth of the Hudson River, which was 
called New Amsterdam. England had a treaty 
with Holland, made by Cromwell, which recog¬ 
nized the Dutch claims in the New World. Two 
things possibly influenced Charles perfidiously 
to regard this treaty as a scrap of paper: one was 
his hatred for Cromwell, and the other was that 
Louis XIV wished to conquer Holland for the 
purpose of extending his own kingdom and forc¬ 
ing Romanism on the Netherlands. 

By the secret Treaty of Dover the French 
ruler bribed the English king with a gift of 
300,000 pounds to join forces with him against 
Holland. Charles never cheeped to Parliament 
on this little deal. There was another secret deal 
made: that Louis would pay Charles 200,000 
pounds a year from the date when the English 
came and he should openly avow himself a 
Roman Catholic. Like the sneaking traitor he 
was, Charles sent a British fleet under the com¬ 
mand of his brother, James, the Duke of York. 
They sailed under sealed orders, with the crew, 
and the nation, in total ignorance of their maneu¬ 
ver, and they finally came up the Hudson and 
demanded the Dutch Colony’s immediate and 
unconditional surrender. The Dutch were not 


JOHN BUNYAN 


95 


prepared to defend themselves, so the English 
took the town, and called it New York in honor 
of the royal brother who had perpetrated the 
robbery. 

Shortly after the fire of London (Charles 
was at war with Holland at this time), the Dutch 
sailed up the Thames and took London. To give 
you an idea of England at that time it is said that 
Parliament had granted Charles large sums of 
money on different occasions to build and equip 
a navy, but that he had wasted this money on his 
mistresses. The English navy consisted of a lot 
of rotten hulks, with the sailors constantly behind 
in their pay, and always ready to mutiny. When 
the Dutch fleet sailed up the Thames there was 
no opposition. They burned the English boats, 
blockaded the river, and made Charles get down 
on his knees and beg for peace. 

Charles at this time had intended to pro¬ 
claim himself openly as a convert to the Church 
of Rome. He issued a proclamation of indul¬ 
gence to all religions, with the hidden intention 
of favoring the Church of Rome especially. Bun- 
yan was released from prison, and it must be 
recorded that once, and only once in his life, he 
was taken in by a man, for he went completely 


96 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


wrong in his judgment of Charles. He believed 
that Charles was acting in good faith, not know¬ 
ing his secret meanness, and wrote an apprecia¬ 
tive article along this line. He compared Charles 
with the alien king who had been kind to the 
Children of Israel. Of course Charles acted 
without legal warrant in issuing this indulgence 
without the sanction of Parliament. But that 
was nothing new for Charles, for his sole ambi¬ 
tion constantly was to rule without Parliament, 
and extort from everyone all the money he could. 

Parliament saw through his scheme, how¬ 
ever, and what few Dissenters were in that body 
fought the indulgence because it was illegal. 
They knew also that Charles was working under 
cover as to his real motive. So Parliament 
passed a law requiring every government officer 
to publicly acknowledge himself a Protestant. 
Charles tried to conciliate them by marrying his 
niece, Princess Mary, to William of Orange, the 
president of the Dutch republic. This was a bad 
move on Charles’ part, for later William threw 
James, Duke of York, off the throne. 

Charles was a typical despot, and a poor sort 
of man. A lot of men when they have trouble 
in the business world take it out on their families 


JOHN BUNYAN 


97 


when they get home, while others, if they have 
any trouble at home take it out on the folks they 
work with. Whenever Charles had trouble with 
his mistresses, or with Parliament, he took it out 
on the Dissenters, and as it so happened John 
Bunyan was about the biggest individual suff erer. 
Right at this time Charles, chafing at his domestic 
and political reverses, began to tighten down on 
the Dissenters. This was the reason Bunyan went 
back to jail so quickly, why his books were con¬ 
fiscated by the censor, and his publisher given so 
much trouble. 

We can understand now why the American 
colonists fought so strenuously for the freedom 
of the press, and why John Milton wrote that 
immortal document, “The Areopagitica” in 
which he flayed those in authority, drunk with 
power and blinded, who would kill a good book 
because it ran counter to their prejudices. No 
wonder our forefathers inscribed this freedom to 
print on their banners when they were fighting 
for liberty. How deep are the roots of English 
institutions embedded in our soil. There is some¬ 
thing common between the two countries that 
nothing can destroy. 


98 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


In Bunyan’s second imprisonment he 
printed a “Defence of the Doctrine of Justifica¬ 
tion by Faith in Jesus Christ, showing through 
Gospel Holiness Flows from Thence.” The title 
goes on further to say that Mr. Fowler’s pre¬ 
tended design of Christianity proves to be noth¬ 
ing more than trampling under foot the blood of 
the Son of God, and idolizing man’s own right¬ 
eousness. This Mr. Edward Fowler had, early 
in 1671 while rector at Northill in Bedfordshire, 
published a book called, “The Design of Chris¬ 
tianity.” Mr. Fowler had been a Dissenter, was 
ejected in ’62, and speedily conformed in order 
not to lose his “living.” Like the immortal 
Bishop of Bray, it did not make any difference 
who was ruling or what the religion was; he was 
going to be Bishop of Bray if he had to change 
several times. 

Bunyan Replies to Fowler 

A copy of Fowler’s pamphlet fell into Bun¬ 
yan’s hands while he was in jail, and he was fired 
immediately with the rector’s heresies. Fowler 
was really a Unitarian, and, according to Bun¬ 
yan, also a mixture of Quaker and Romanist. He 


JOHN BUNYAN 


99 


was preaching reformation rather than regenera¬ 
tion, and Bunyan says that he overthrew the 
wholesome doctrine contained in the tenth, 
eleventh and thirteenth of the Thirty-nine 
Articles of the Church of England, while pre¬ 
tending to be a minister in that church. There 
were folks even in that day who did not know 
what they believed, and some others who believed 
everything and nothing. We see also the effect 
of the universities on the pulpit, for Bunyan says 
that Fowler did not get his doctrine-frqm Scrip¬ 
ture, but from the Cambridge thinker, John 
Smith; “while John Smith goes in turn to Plato; 
and so they wrap the business up.” 

Fowler argued also that in matters of wor¬ 
ship we would have to leave it to whatever is 
commended by custom or commanded by super¬ 
iors. Bunyan reminded him that he hopped from 
Presbyterianism to the prelatical mode, and if 
there would be another change he would keep 
going backward and forward. He wanted to 
know what Fowler would do if he found himself 
in Turkey. If Fowler was going to turn around 
like a weathervane every time the wind shifted 
simply for the sake of “sleeping in a whole skin” 
Bunyan would just have to leave him to his fate; 


100 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


but as far as he was concerned he was not influ¬ 
enced by man, but by God. It is thought that 
Bunyan was released from jail soon after he 
published his reply to Fowler. Thus ended his 
second imprisonment. 

That Conventicle Act 

In March, 1672, the Conventicle Act was 
superseded by the Declaration of Indulgence. 
This let Bunyan out of prison, and he returned 
to his Bedford home. Before we part with the 
Conventicle Act, and we are glad to part with it, 
there is one thing that must be said. It did more 
to corrupt the nation than possibly any Act of 
Parliament ever passed. To make this weak and 
unjust Conventicle Act grow teeth and claws a 
spy system was inaugurated, and an army of 
men and women were employed to act as spies 
and informers. The snooper you have with you 
always, and that was the age of the snooper, for 
it paid to be one. Men who could not make a liv¬ 
ing at anything else began to be able to wear 
good clothes through spying on folks. 

You remember in Bunyan’s story of “The 
Life and Death of Mr. Badman” there is a pic- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


101 


ture of English rural life of that time. Mr. Bad- 
man was the reprobate who professed religion 
until he married the good church girl, and “once 
aboard the lugger and the gal was his” he began 
to reveal himself. You will recall that he threat¬ 
ened to turn informer and report his wife for 
attending church. Bunyan said that Mr. Bad- 
man “had malice enough in his heart to turn 
informer,” and he would have done it except he 
was a tradesman and was afraid he would lose 
all his trade if he did. 

Bunyan cites the case of several informers 
who came to a bad end, which was just punish¬ 
ment for their snooping. However, snooping 
paid; some of them received as high as fifteen 
pounds for a successful conviction. The sons of 
Belial in every community quit working and 
turned informers. Of course the State was re¬ 
sponsible, for it established a complete espionage 
system which ramified everywhere. There was a 
Spy-book found which was arranged alphabetic- 
ally, which showed how the district around Bed¬ 
ford was under complete serveillance. It is 
significant to note that the spies reported that all 
over the country hundreds of people would 
gather at a time to attend meetings. Just before 
8 


102 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


the death of the Act of Uniformity this spy sys¬ 
tem was at its worst, and seemed to be burning 
brightest, just as a candle flares up when in its 
shank it fries in its own fat. 

Bunyan at Liberty 

Bunyan was now at liberty for three years, 
and in that time did a great deal of writing. He 
published in ’72 a “Confession of Faith and 
Reason of My Practice.” In this booklet he dis¬ 
cusses the question of open communion. He 
states in the preface that while he “dare not com¬ 
municate with the open profane, yet I can with 
those invisible saints that differ about water 
baptism.” 

In 1873 he published another book travers¬ 
ing the same lines, entitled “Difference in Judg¬ 
ment about Water Baptism no Bar to Commu¬ 
nion, or to Communicate with saints as saints 
proved lawful.” This was an answer to a book 
written by the Baptists entitled, “Some Serious 
Reflections on that part of Mr. Bunyan’s Con¬ 
fession of Faith touching Church Communion 
with Unbaptized Believers.” In ’74 he again 
wrote an answer to his critics within his own com- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


103 


munion, and titled it, “Peaceable Principles and 
True, or a Brief Answer to Dr. Danver’s and 
Mr. Paul’s books against my Confession of 
Faith, and Differences in Judgment about 
Water Baptism No Bar to Communion; wherein 
their Scriptureless notions are overthrown, and 
my Peaceable Principles still maintained.” 

These titles indicate that there was at that 
time some healthy discussion in the Baptist 
church, and that John Bunyan was a very broad¬ 
minded man. He himself said, “I never cared to 
meddle with unimportant points which were in 
dispute among the saints; yet it pleased me much 
to contend with great earnestness for the word 
of faith and the remission of sins by the suffer¬ 
ing and death of Jesus. I saw my work before 
me did run in another channel, even to carrying 
the awakening word; to that, therefore, I do 
adhere.” While he conceded water baptism to be 
“God’s ordinance,” he refused to “make an idol 
of it.” He was like that character in the Old 
Testament who said, “If thy heart is right in this 
matter as my heart, give me thine hand.” It is 
said that Bunyan’s arguments were so logical 
and his leadership among the Baptists at Bed¬ 
ford so strong at this time that his church became 


104 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


open communion, and fellowshipped those who 
believed in infant baptism. 

Those Infamous Rumors 

Do not imagine that John Bunyan was a 
hero, after this second imprisonment, to all the 
folks round about. He was a hero to most of 
his church folk, but as far as outsiders were con¬ 
cerned he fulfilled in his own person that saying 
of Jesus about a prophet not being without honor 
save in his own country. There were people on 
the outside who hated him bitterly, and they were 
only waiting for a chance to do him some mean¬ 
ness. They began to spread all kinds of infamous 
rumors about him. In the early part of 1674 a 
farmer lived at Edworth on the Bedfordshire 
border, named John Beaumont. He was a 
widower, and his unmarried daughter, Agnes, 
then 21, kept house for him. This farmer had 
sat under Bunyan’s preaching, and wept with 
conviction. Folks are the same in all generations; 
John Beaumont had no depth of soil in his sys¬ 
tem, and when he left church and his neighbors 
laughed at him for listening to Bunyan he began 
to be ashamed and to feel mean toward Bunyan 


JOHN BUNYAN 


105 


for making him a butt of ridicule in the neigh¬ 
borhood. 

Agnes, however, seemed to have been a girl 
of strong convictions and independent mind, and 
she joined the Bedford Church at Gamlingay, 
Bunyan receiving her into the church. In Febru¬ 
ary, 1674, she was anxious to be present at a 
meeting of the church there, and gained her 
father’s reluctant consent. She was to go with a 
neighbor named John Wilson, who failed to 
come; and, as the roads were impassable on foot, 
and as Bunyan happened to ride up at the time, 
she asked to be allowed to ride with him on the 
pillion. Bunyan knew how her father hated him, 
and did not want to let her go, but she begged so 
hard that he finally consented. Her father saw 
them leaving, but could not plow through the 
mud to reach them. When Agnes came home that 
evening the door was locked against her. She 
spent that cold night in the barn, and next day 
went to her brother’s house, where she stayed for 
a few days until her father came to his senses. 
She went home on Sunday, and the following 
Tuesday her father was seized with a fatal ill¬ 
ness, and died suddenly. 


106 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


There was a snooper in the neighborhood, 
who pretended to be a preacher, who was very 
jealous of Bunyan and he started a pretty bad 
story about Agnes, aided and abetted by a neigh¬ 
boring lawyer whom the girl had refused to 
marry. They said she had poisoned her father, 
and that Bunyan had helped her to do it. There 
was an official post-mortem examination con¬ 
ducted by the coroner, the charges were dis¬ 
proved, and there was every evidence that John 
Beaumont’s death, while sudden, was natural. 
However, this proves how calumny would sear 
virtue itself. 

That was not the only lie about Bunyan. 
They said he was a witch, because of his magnetic 
power in preaching and his ability to persuade 
people. They said he was a Jesuit in disguise 
and under the pay of the Pope; that he was a' 
highwayman; that he had his misses, and two or 
three wives. He replied to these accusations in 
these words which are well worth being pre¬ 
served, and show the nobility of character and 
the innate purity of the man: “My foes have 
missed the mark in this. I am not the man. If 
all the fornicators and adulterers in England 
were hanging by the neck, John Bunyan, the 


JOHN BUNYAN 


107 


object of their envy, would still be alive and well. 
I know not whether there be such a thing as a 
woman breathing under the cope of the whole 
heavens, but by their apparel, their children or 
common fame, except my wife.” 

Bunyan in Great Demand 

Bunyan was a faithful pastor, and the 
church records at Bedford show that there were 
numerous church trials, but you may be sure that 
the scandal-monger was given short shift. There 
is a story of a lady, who, after being warned 
privately not to peddle scandal, continued, and 
was publicly rebuked. This woman was placed 
on probation until she could reform and bring 
forth fruits meet for repentence. There is a most 
interesting entry in the church record at Bedford 
administered toward a young lady who ‘‘had been 
admonished for disobedience to her parents, to 
wit, for calling her father liar, and for characters 
to her mother.” 

During his pastorate at Bedford Bunyan 
carried the Word to all the country round about. 
He was in demand everywhere. Of course dur¬ 
ing this time there was more liberty than usual. 


108 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


However, there were places where because of 
local conditions it was not well for meetings to be 
held except in secret. Here again John Bunyan 
encouraged his listeners and comforted their 
hearts by the Word of God. 

Back Again to Prison 

John Bunyan had liberty for three years, 
but in 1675 there were political changes. The 
king was anxious to grant a great deal of liberty 
to the Roman Catholics, and prepared an act 
called the Declaration of Indulgence, which sus¬ 
pended all the penal laws against the Romanists 
and the Protestant Dissenters. He ordered all 
the clergy to read this declaration from their 
pulpits on a given Sunday. The Archbishop of 
Canterbury with six other Bishops petitioned to 
be excused. The king refused to excuse them, 
and threw them in the Tower. One of the Bishops 
was Trelawney of Bristol, but a native of Corn¬ 
wall. The news of his arrest roused the fighting 
spirit of those independent people, and all over 
the country, especially in Cornwall, the song 
spread like wildfire, 


JOHN BUNYAN 


109 


“And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney 
die? 

There’s thirty thousand Cornishmen will know 
the reason why.” 

And the miners took it up, and sang, 

“And shall Trelawney die, and shall Trelawney 
die? 

There’s twenty thousand under ground will know 
the reason why.” 

In spite of the dire threats of James, the 
jury refused to convict the Bishops, and, in spite 
of all the pressure he could bring to bear, Par¬ 
liament refused to pass his law. The result was 
that Bunyan was again arrested and thrown into 
prison for preaching, for the old laws were oper¬ 
ative again, and with a good deal more vengeance. 

The first and second imprisonments were in 
the county jail, called by some Silver Street jail, 
but the third imprisonment was in the jail over 
the River Ouse, where Bunyan had been baptized 
as a young man. It is admitted by practically all 
critics that it was in this third imprisonment that 
Bunyan wrote his Pilgrim’s Progress. We have 
shown that Bunyan was learning to write 
throughout the years. When he went back for 


110 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


his third imprisonment in ’75 he had been writing 
since ’56, a total of 19 years, and had written 22 
books and pamphlets in that time. It is interest¬ 
ing to note that he lived sixty years and wrote 
sixty books. 

The Seventeenth Century an 
Age of Writing 

We stated that Bunyan was learning how to 
write, and he was doing it in the best school in the 
world. In this day we find ourselves reading so 
much that we haven’t time to think. We spread 
out over so much territory that we become fright¬ 
fully thin. Our stream of culture today is like 
Powder River up in Montana, which in places is 
a mile wide and an inch deep. Bunyan was draw¬ 
ing his inspiration from that font of Living 
Water, that well of purest English undefiled, the 
English Bible. You will remember that he had 
only two books in his library, Fox’s Book of 
Martyrs, and the Bible. No wonder the Pilgrim 
seems inspired next to Holy Writ itself, and 
flashes and burns up with genius. Bunyan had 
all of the ruggedness and beauty and directness 
of the writers of the Bible, and in an age of 


JOHN BUNYAN 


111 


excess book-baggage he demonstrated that a 
straight statement is the shortest way to make 
your point. 

The seventeenth century was an age of pro¬ 
lixity. You remember the army of the Common¬ 
wealth and the army of the king carried printing 
presses around with them, and in the space of a 
few years England was smothered under pam¬ 
phlets. The sainted Baxter, who was a chaplain 
in the Parliamentary army, and another Puritan 
divine, Dr. Owen, produced folio after folio 
like almanacs, writing seventy volumes each, 
most of them of formidable size. 

They tell the story of a seventeenth century 
scribbler named Prynne, who wrote a library 
amounting to over two hundred books. He wrote 
a book against actors and acting. Henrietta 
Maria, the queen, wife of Charles the First, was, 
as you remember, a French woman, and she was 
also an amateur actress. When you couple that 
fact with the Gallic temperament you find some¬ 
one who does not take to criticism kindly. This 
lady did not; she became offended at Mr. 
Prynne’s book, and took it as a personal insult. 
Prynne was condemned to fine and imprison¬ 
ment, was pilloried at Westminster and at 


112 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Cheapside, and had an ear cut off in each place. 
A contemporary who saw Prynne in the pillory 
at Cheapside informs us that while he stood 
there they secured all of his books they could in 
that place, and burned his large volumes under 
his nose, almost suffocating him, which was add¬ 
ing insult to injury. 

However, they did not burn up all of 
Prynne’s books—only those around Cheapside, 
so a rich but sentimental sister, who believed as 
Prynne did, bought up a complete edition, and 
put them in the library of a London college. 
When that school burned, these volumes were 
saved because being in folio they were considered 
the most valuable there. In other words, litera¬ 
ture went by the ton in that day, and when you 
spoke of the weight of a book you meant avoir¬ 
dupois. England was full of authors who had 
ruined booksellers, and it was an age in which it 
was said that it Was easier to write up to a folio 
than to write down to an octavo; for correction, 
selection and rejection were either not known or 
looked down on. 

Bunyan in Pilgrim’s Progress shows the fine 
effect of the Bible on his style. He comes right 
to the point. Not only that, but as we have seen. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


113 


most of Bunyan’s other books were written for a 
purpose. He was either stirred up to controversy 
by a Quaker, an Established clergyman, an Anti- 
nomian, or his own brethren; or he wanted to cor¬ 
rect some false doctrine in the world. But the 
Pilgrim’s Progress was written for himself alone: 
he tells us that in the opening sentence. He wrote 
it because he could not help it. The figures came 
trooping out as soon as he set his pen to paper, 
and he could not put them back in the box any 
more than you can recall a word after you speak 
it. He never wasted time developing a character; 
the character was developed when it was born, 
and he, like a good artist, could draw a picture 
with a few deft strokes of his brush. 

Bunyan’s Writing Style— 

“It came from my heart, so to my 
head, and thence into my 
fingers trickled” 

Bunyan himself says that, “It came from 
my heart, so to my head, and thence into my 
fingers trickled.” From his fingers he dribbled it 
daintily till he had it done. In the poetic preface 
he wrote to the Pilgrim, he repeats this thought, 


114 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


using a very homely figure of catching something 
by the tail and pulling it out of a hole, the size 
amazing you as you pull. This is what he said: 

“Thus I set pen to paper with delight, 

And quickly had my thoughts in black and white. 
For having now my method by the end, 

Still as I pull’d, it came; and so I penn’d 

It down, until it came at last to be 

The length and breadth and bigness which you 

see.” 

The Pilgrim was so good that it seemed too 
good to be true. That an untutored tinker could 
write it did not seem natural to the critics, so 
they accused Bunyan of plagiarism; but you will 
recall that in the end of the “Holy War” he goes 
on to say that the matter and manner was all his 
own, and nobody knew anything about it until he 
had finished it. He even resisted the temptation 
which besets the best of poets and authors in that 
he did not read it to anyone else while he was 
writing it. He repeats that no mortal knew of it 
until it was done, and that after that “by books, 
by wits, by tongues or hand, or pen add five 
words to it, or write half a line.” All of it was 
his. We do not imagine that Bunyan himself 


JOHN BUNYAN 


115 


even revised it, and we quite agree with Cole¬ 
ridge that to polish it would be to destroy it. 
Bunyan wanted it just as he wrote it, to chalk 
out before the eyes of the reader his Pilgrim, 
and to write it in such a “dialect” that all sorts 
and conditions of men might “get it.” 

When he was let out of jail he read the Pil¬ 
grim manuscript to some of the members of the 
Bedford church. The ultra-religious, especially 
those among them who lacked imagination or a 
sense of humor, threw several mental hand¬ 
springs, and were shocked to death to think that 
their preacher would write anything so frivolous. 
Why, it approached fiction, and was almost in 
the form of a fairy story. He ought to be seri¬ 
ous, forging thunderbolts, or directing a blast 
against the terrible army of sinners. He ought 
to be taking a fall out of the Antinomians and 
the Quakers, and he ought to be giving the 
Established Church some hard cracks for the 
way they had treated him. The whole thing 
ought to be done very seriously; no frivolity, 
mark you. Sancho Panza said on one occasion, 
“Bring your problem into council, and one will 
cry ‘It is white’ and the other ‘It is black.’ ” 


116 


TINKER AND THINKER; 


Bunyan found that out, and he found out that he 
would have to use his own judgment. 

Fortunately a Few Said 
“Print It” 

Fortunately there were a few of these good 
folks who had a little juice in their system, and 
they enjoyed it to the limit, and said, “Print it.” 
Bunyan was fifty years of age at this time, and 
always did have a large reserve of good, hard 
sense, even recognizing his youthful spiritual 
conflicts; but you remember how he passed 
through much that would have driven another 
man crazy. He settled the whole matter by sen¬ 
sibly putting his emotions aside and deciding it 
on the Word of God. So he printed it. 

We presume it is the custom today for some 
of the highly educated to bite their thumb at 
Bunyan’s book, and to raise a supercilious eye¬ 
brow; but let them have their fun. When they 
produce a book which stands a chance of lasting 
two hundred and fifty years we will take them a 
little more seriously. You remember the story 
of John Marshall, Chief Justice of the United 
States, who, after hearing his pastor preach on 


JOHN BUNYAN 


117 


the parables of Jesus, said that anybody could 
write a parable. “AH right,” said the preacher, 
“write me a few for next Sunday.” “Very 
good,” said Marshall, “will half a dozen do?” 
“Plenty, if you can get that many finished in 
that time.” The preacher met Marshall the next 
Saturday. “How about my parables? Are you 
ready to deliver them?” Said the great Chief 
Justice, who could write an opinion on law as 
easily as most folks can write a letter, “I have 
been trying all week, and have not been able to 
write one.” 

Macaulay said there were a lot of bright men 
in England in the first part of the seventeenth 
century, but there were only two of them that 
had the imaginative faculty to a marked degree: 
one was John Milton, who could write in Latin 
as well as he could in English, and who gave the 
world Paradise Lost; the other was John Bun- 
yan, who could not spell but who gave the world 
the Pilgrim’s Progress. 

Some folks thought that Bunyan copied 
from Spenser’s Faerie Queen. This is enough to 
make you laugh. Spenser’s Faerie Queen is about 
the most unreal thing ever written. It is said that 
it has one unpardonable fault, the fault of tedi- 


118 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


ousness. People do not go far into it until they 
become sick of cardinal virtues and deadly sins, 
and they long for the society of plain men and 
women. Macaulay said, “Of the persons who read 
the first canto not one in ten reaches the end of 
the first book, and not one in a hundred per¬ 
severes to the end of the poem. If the last six 
books, which are said to have been destroyed in 
Ireland, had been preserved, we doubt whether 
any heart less stout than that of a commentator 
would have held out to the end.” 

Full of Live Folks 

On the other hand, the Pilgrim’s Progress 
is the only allegory ever written which had all of 
the earmarks of being alive. No wonder those 
friends of Bunyan in Bedfordtown advised him 
to print it. It was too good to be lost. They 
knew all of the characters; most of them lived 
right around the corner, and they rubbed elbows 
with them at least six days out of the week, and 
some of them seven. They knew Christian be¬ 
cause they knew Bunyan. All that Bunyan had 
to do to give us the character of Christian was to 
look into his own heart. These people knew 


JOHN BUNYAN 


119 


Pliable—weak, easily persuaded Pliable, who 
believed what the last man he talked to told him, 
but was ready to run as soon as he got his feet 
wet at the Slough of Despond. They knew 
Obstinate, a typical beef-fed, bull-headed Eng¬ 
lishman: there were dozens of this fellow in every 
town. And you did not have to go to the Lord 
of the Manor to find the character of well fed, 
over-dressed, over-stuffed Mr. Worldly Wise¬ 
man, who dwelt in the town of Carnal Policy, 
and who directed Christian to “a gentleman 
named Legality, who dwelt in the village of 
Morality.” The early wood-cuts made Mr. 
Worldly Wiseman look as pompous as Henry 
the Eighth. They knew “a man whose name was 
Talkative,” who had an innocent, open faced 
expression, and an ever open mouth, and who 
could talk all day and say nothing. They knew 
Hypocrisy, whose eyes were closed as if in 
prayer, his right hand extended as if delivering 
the apostolic benediction, and whose left hand 
was behind his back ready to take a bribe, and 
saying out of the corner of his mouth, “Slip it 
to me.” They knew Ignorance, who knew noth¬ 
ing but was not aware of it, but who, with a face 
shining like a new tin pan, was always smirking 



Drawn by Ralph Chesse 


The Slough of Despond 













JOHN BUNYAN 


121 


and smiling, and who, while he could not prove a 
thing, based his hope of eternal life on the sup¬ 
position, “I am always full of good notions.” 
These characters are not only alive, but they 
march, march—not the march of the wooden 
soldiers—not the march of marionettes; they 
march with the swing of those who were full of 
red blood corpuscles, whether they be good or 
whether they be bad. 

Forced Upon the Critics by 
the Common People 

It is because the book is full of live folks 
that it appealed to the people; the common peo¬ 
ple at first, for the literati were jealous, as usual, 
and resented a tinker poaching on their pre¬ 
serves. They believed, like the judges of Bedford, 
that Bunyan had better stick to pots and pans 
and leave souls and literature to his betters. It is 
one of the books that the common people forced 
on the critics, and the critics were forced to 
accept it because they could not help themselves. 

Pilgrim’s Progress has beexi the “vade 
mecum” of thouands of earnest Christians for 
two hundred and fifty years. Young and old, 


122 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


rich and poor, learned and unlearned, have re¬ 
joiced in it, and wept over its pages. It has been 
baptized with the tears of thousands of earnest 
hearts. Many a soul it has led to Christ. Thou¬ 
sands seeing Christian with the burden on his 
back decided to go on a pilgrimage with him, and 
felt the burden roll away when he led them to 
the foot of the cross. 

There is no question of the work of genius 
in the Pilgrim’s Progress. Taine, the great 
critic, says that Bunyan has the freedom, the 
tone, ease and clearness of Homer. The first edi¬ 
tion of the Pilgrim reveals the fact that Bunyan 
was a natural writer, and not a product of the 
schools. Take his spelling, for instance. When 
it came to spelling Josh Billings could not hold 
a candle to him. We know that there was a good 
deal of off-side spelling in that day, but Bunyan 
never let the spelling book get in his way. For 
example, he spelled the word die in three ways: 
“die,” “dye,” and “dy”; he wrote for Slough of 
Despond, “Slow of Dispond”; “ay” for aye; 
“bien” for been; “bruit” for brute; and “ray- 
ment” and “rainment” for raiment; “strodled” 
for straddled. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


123 


It is said that there is nothing remarkable 
in doubling the final consonant in such words as 
“generall” and “untill,” for that was the seven¬ 
teenth century custom, but Bunyan doubles it in 
such words as “bogg,” “denn,” “ragg,” “wagg,” 
and, what is even more unusual, he doubles the 
medial in such words as, “hazzard,” “fellon,” 
“eccho,” “widdow.” He dropped his final e’s, 
writing “knowledg,” “bridg,” but he uses the “e” 
to give the old plural form, making it “shooes,” 
“braines,” “alwaies.” He was strong on collo¬ 
quial expressions and grammatical irregularities, 
writing “catched up,” “shewen,” “ditest,” “then 
for to go,” “I should a been,” “afraid on’t,” 
“such as thee and I,” “you was.” 

Bunyan did not spell brains according to the 
dictionary, but he had them all the same, and all 
that is needed to produce a great book is brains. 
You can write your book with lead pencil on 
butcher’s paper, spell like Josh Billings, and dis¬ 
regard punctuation marks, but if you have 
“braines” or “brains”—either form will do as 
long as you have them—a hard-boiled publisher 
will even send you a prepaid telegram accepting 
your book. 


124 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


It is said that the printer corrected a good 
deal of the spelling in the first edition. I wonder 
if any writer is a genius to his proofreader? 
However, in the second edition there were fewer 
mistakes in spelling but more typographical mis¬ 
takes. Bunyan wrote some striking subheads on 
the margins in the first edition which were evi¬ 
dently “killed” by the printer or proofreader in 
the second edition. For instance, “Ignorance 
jangles with them”; “How to carry it to a fool,” 
and “Talkative talks but does not.” 

The first edition cost one shilling and six 
pence. The first editions of the Pilgrim were 
printed on something that resembled thin 
butcher’s paper, and a man had to enjoy good 
eyesight to read it. Of course it was meant for 
tinkers, and farriers, house maids, carters, col¬ 
liers and farmers. It never came out of the 
kitchen, and it never showed its snub nose in a 
drawing room for the good and simple reason 
that the folks who bought it had no drawing 
room, and were not permitted in the drawing 
room of the folks they worked for. 

But the common people read it gladly, and 
it crept over the land as gently and as surely as 
a spring zephyr goes from the channel to the 


JOHN BUNYAN 


1 25 


Thames. After awhile some of the upper circles 
wanted to know what all the noise was about, 
and they demanded a de luxe edition. This was 
given them on white paper, and to make it “de- 
luxer” still there were some fearfully and won¬ 
derfully made wood-cuts added. After awhile 
the critics read it, and while some coughed behind 
their hands, and others scoffed, the more sensible 
among them prayed for a like gift, offering to 
give all they possessed in exchange for it. 
Macaulay says that when that majestic old men¬ 
tor, Dr. Samuel Johnson, who hated a Tory like 
everything, got the book, he broke over his usual 
rule of never reading a book through, read the 
Pilgrim from cover to cover, and then was peeved 
because there wasn’t more. 

The Second Part of 

Pilgrim’s Progress 

The second part of Pilgrim’s Progress, 
“The Story of Christiana and Her Children,” 
was published in 1684, six years after part one. 
It is a beautiful story, but does not compare with 
part one in the sustained interest and delineation 
of character. It seems to lack alignment in parts, 


126 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


and is not as kinetic as the story of Christian. 
Some of the critics think that Christiana in her 
beauty and strength represents Elizabeth Bun- 
yan. However, Christiana’s children were four 
sons, while Bunyan’s were three sons and three 
daughters. But that is not a real difficulty. I 
am inclined to believe—possibly because I want 
to believe it—that Christiana is Elizabeth, his 
second wife, and Mercy is his first wife, Mary. 

There are some artificialities in part two 
that never occur in part one. Take the character 
of Mr. Sagacity for instance. In the first part 
the characters are mostly men; in the second part 
they are the female counterparts of these men. 
It is distinctly feminine. There is Mrs. Light- 
mind, Mrs. Know-nothing and Mrs. Bat’s-eyes. 
In the House of the Interpreter there is Muck- 
raker (you will recall President Roosevelt’s ref¬ 
erence to it, which reminds us of Bunyan’s influ¬ 
ence even in this day). You remember Mercy 
and the man who courted her. There is some 
humor in this courtship, but yet it seems rather 
out of place on a pilgrimage such as they were on. 

In this second part, however, is one of the 
finest little poems Bunyan ever wrote. Bunyan 
wrote a good deal of poetry, some of it good, and 


JOHN BUNYAN 


127 


some of it not so good; but to my mind one of 
the prettiest pieces of verse he wrote is the Song 
of the Shepherd Boy, which Mr. Great-heart, 
that beautiful character, calls attention to; 

“He who is down need fear no fall, 

He that is low no pride; 

He that is humble ever shall 
Have God to be his guide. 

I am content with what I have, 

Little be it or much; 

And, Lord, contentment still I crave, 
Because Thou savest such.” 

Bunyan’s “Holy War” 

Is Published 

In 1682 Bunyan was at liberty, and had 
more leisure to write. The Pilgrim, published in 
’78, was probably bringing him in some money, 
and his financial condition being improved he 
could devote more time to writing. In ’82 he 
published “The Holy War made by Shaddai 
upon Diabolus for the Regaining of the Metrop¬ 
olis of the World; or the losing and taking again 
of the Town of Mansoul.” In the Pilgrim the 


128 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


soul of Christian and his companions is the thing 
of great concern; the “Holy War” deals with the 
souls of the race; it is the struggle between 
Shaddai and Diabolus—God and the Devil, over 
the souls of a community. 

Bunyan was an intense individualist. He 
believed that the only remedy for the redemption 
of the world was the regeneration of the indi¬ 
vidual; but in the “Holy War” he recognized 
that individuals run cities; the regenerated man 
runs the city for God, while the unregenerate 
runs it for the devil. A regenerated individual 
can do a lot of good as an individual, but his 
power for good is increased when authority is 
placed in his hands; the opposite holds true with 
a sinner. One sinner destroys much good, and 
his power for destruction increases as authority 
is placed in his hands. 

You will recall that when James the Second 
was on the throne, during the intense period of 
Bunyan’s persecution, Bunyan addressed a let¬ 
ter to the king, showing his loyalty. This bears 
on the Holy War, for Bunyan recognizes that 
the acts of the ruler have long arms and reach 
down into the ordinary affairs of the citizen. He 
says, “I believe that by magistrates and powers 


JOHN BUNYAN 


129 


we shall be delivered and kept from Antichrist. 
Let the king have verily a place in your hearts, 
and with heart and mouth give thanks to him; he 
is a better savior of us than we may be aware of.” 
Of course Bunyan puts his personal religious 
experience into the story of the many individuals 
who take part in the Holy War. While the city 
as a whole has to be redeemed, Bunyan is sure 
that Diabolus must not have the slightest corner 
in it. This is his short poem in the preface: 

“Then lend thine ears to what I do relate 
Touching the town of Mansoul and her state; 
How she was lost, took captive, made a slave, 
And how against him set that should her save, 
Yea, how by hostile ways she did oppose 
Her Lord, and with his enemy did close. 

For they are true; and he will them deny 
Must needs the best of records vilify. 

“For my part, I myself was in the town 
Both when ’twas set up and when pulled down. 
I saw Diabolus in his possession. 

And Mansoul also under his oppression: 

Yea, I was there when she him owned for Lord, 
And to him did submit with one accord. 


130 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


“When Mansoul trampled upon things divine 
And wallowed in filth as doth a swine, 

When she betook herself unto his arms, 

Fought her Emmanuel, despised his charms; 
Then was I there, and did rejoice to see 
Diabolus and Mansoul so agree. 

“Let no man count me then a fable-maker, 

Nor make my name or credit a partaker 
Of their decision. That is here in view 
Of mine own knowledge I dare say is true.” 

Typical Bunyanesque Passages 
in The “Holy War” 

The Holy War is a story of salvation. It 
deals with man’s first disobedience in the Garden 
of Eden in eating the forbidden fruit; with the 
fall of man from his high estate of purity; with 
the coming of the law which would redeem those 
who had revolted; and finally, with the coming 
of the Son in redemption; and while man is re¬ 
deemed, still he is a free agent, and while saved 
is not safe. This in brief is the story of the re¬ 
demption of Mansoul, whose maker and builder 
was Shaddai, in the country of Universe. 


JOHN BUNYAN 


131 


While the subject is more ponderous than 
the Pilgrim and the movement is slower, com¬ 
parable only to the moving of old-time engines 
of war as compared to lithe Pilgrim, still there 
are some typical Bunyanesque passages which no 
one but this “tinker out of Bedford” would have 
thought of. For instance, no aliens were allowed 
to enter the city, and the walls could not be 
broken down from the outside; the only breach 
possible was from the folks on the inside. The 
city has five gates: Ear Gate, Eye Gate, Mouth, 
Nose and Feel Gate; in other words, the five 
senses. Diabolus, who had been a servant of 
Shaddai, but who had rather reign in hell than 
be a servant in heaven, is now the king of the 
blacks, or negroes, representing the fallen angels. 
He consults with Beelzebub and Lucifer, and 
takes Lucifer’s advice to try to crawl in as a 
snake. Thus we see the Eden story. 

He comes to the wall, asks for a parley, and 
tells the good folks in the town—Captain Resist- 
ence, Lord Will-be-will, Mr. Conscience, the 
Recorder, and Lord Understanding, the Lord 
Mayor, that he is an interested neighbor who has 
observed their slavery, and wants them to be free. 
There is a tree growing in their garden that has 


132 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


fruit that will make them wise. The people, be¬ 
lieving Diabolus, run to the apple tree; Ear and 
Eye Gate are opened, Diabolus enters, becomes 
the king of Mansoul, and establishes himself in 
the castle, which is the heart of man. All of the 
vile followers of Diabolus take the public offices: 
Lord Lusting is made Lord Mayor, and there is 
a new Board of Aldermen: Mr. Haughty, Mr. 
Swearing, Mr. No-truth, Mr. Drunkenness, Mr. 
Cheating. We still have some of them as aider- 
men in some American cities. Of course Bunyan 
saw the town of Bedford “new modeled,” and he 
used it here. 

Now with Mansoul in the hands of the unre¬ 
generate, something must be done by the forces 
of righteousness, and so the army of Shaddai 
appears before the town of Mansoul with war 
engines to break down the walls. This is the law 
and the Old Testament dispensation. But as 
before, it is only the people inside who can effect 
a breach. Bunyan’s short experience in the Par¬ 
liamentary army, where they marched and 
countermarched, attacked and were attacked, and 
threw their strength against cities or defended 
them, came in valuable here. Finally the Son, 
Emmanuel, comes, and calls on the town to sur- 


JOHN BUNYAN 


133 


render. Diabolus makes all sorts of offers to 
compromise; to give up half of the town, finally 
just to reserve a room in the castle where he can 
have his relatives and friends visit him for old 
time’s sake, but all offers are rejected; he must 
not have an inch of room. 

The town is assaulted and won, and 
Emmanuel comes in dressed in golden armor. 
The people come as penitents, their leader with 
a rope around his neck. They are sure they are 
going to be executed, and they say they ought 
to be; but their sorrow is deep and their contri¬ 
tion is real, and, to their amazement, they are 
freely pardoned by the Son who loves them. All 
of the bells ring with joy, and the people are so 
happy they do not sleep that night. Mansoul is 
again in the hands of the good and true. 

They now have two teachers to instruct 
them: the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, and 
Mr. Conscience. There is a new city government 
of godly men. However, there are some enemies 
still within the wall: Carnal Security, and Mr. 
Present-good. Bunyan was like John Wesley in 
that he believed that wealth was the great cor¬ 
rupter, even of good people; and Bunyan draws 
a picture of human nature with one eye on the 
10 


134 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


earth and the other on heaven. The big danger 
now is that as goodness has brought prosperity 
they will make the castle, the heart, a warehouse 
overcrowded with goods, instead of a place where 
warriors for the truth will abide. “The cares of 
this world, and the deceitfulness of riches ,, —that 
is always the danger. 

Then there is another danger: an army of 
Blood-men, who are reinforced by an army of 
Doubters, twenty-five thousand strong. They 
send in a summons to surrender, but are captured 
by the forces of Emmanuel. The traders within 
the gates are slain with one exception, Mr. 
Unbelief, “A nimble-Jack” they could never get 
hold of, who escapes—and is still abroad. That 
is another stroke that is as true as life. After 
this execution the King calls his people into the 
square, and encourages them to continue in his 
life until his coming again. There is rather an 
indefinite ending, and Bunyan had to leave it 
that way because the fight is never over until a 
man is out of the world. 

While the Holy War cannot be compared 
to the Pilgrim, yet we feel that Macaulay had 
some grounds for saying that if the Pilgrim had 
not been written the Holy War would be the best 


JOHN BUNYAN 


135 


allegory in the English language. There are 
places where the Holy War is unnatural, pon¬ 
derous and far-fetched, and yet it has a great 
deal to redeem it: interesting characters, bright 
lines, vivid action, and a theme as large as all 
creation. Besides that, it shows that Bunyan 
knew that the heart of the natural man was de¬ 
ceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, 
and there was not a move of the enemy of souls 
that he did not know because of his early con¬ 
flicts with Satan. 

Bunyan Knew What He 
Was Doing 

Bunyan not only knew the heart of an indi¬ 
vidual by experience, but he knew what a 
machine of oppression an aggregation of indi¬ 
viduals could construct. He knew that men could 
organize themselves under what they called 
society, and conduct a warfare against their 
brother-men which would be diabolical. It was 
because Bunyan had this information of whole¬ 
some organized wickedness down so pat that 
Rudyard Kipling wrote, during the World War, 
this remarkable poem: 


136 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


“A tinker out of Bedford, 

A vagrant oft in quod, 

A private under Fairfax, 

A minister of God; 

Two hundred years and thirty 
Ere Armageddon came 
His single hand portrayed it, 

And Bunyan was his name. 

“All enemy divisions, 

Recruits of every class, 

And highly screened positions 
For flame or poison-gas; 

The craft that we call modern, 

The crimes that we call new, 

John Bunyan had ’em typed and filed 
In Sixteen Eighty-two. 

“He mapped for those who followed, 
The world in which we are— 

This famous town of ‘MansouP 
That makes the Holy War. 

Her true and traitor people 
The gates along her wall, 

From Eye Gate into Feel Gate, 

John Bunyan showed them all.” 


JOHN BUNYAN 


137 


After Pilgrim’s Progress appeared Bun- 
yan’s name was up, and prosperity began to 
come to him. This was the same year as the 
Popish Plot excitement, and when the names of 
Whig and Tory first appeared in political his¬ 
tory. There was a lot of bitterness still in the 
land, and yet there was a lot of opposition to the 
king and his measures, so Bunyan was unmo¬ 
lested. Besides, he was now a popular idol, not 
only of the Baptists but of all the Dissenters. 
When he went out on preaching engagements it 
was like some exceedingly high dignitary making 
a visit. So complete was his rule over the Baptist 
Church that he was called, “Bishop Bunyan.” 

A Great Preacher as Well 
as Writer 

Bunyan was a great preacher as well as 
writer. This was natural. He had in the first 
years of conviction deep, startling, extraordinary 
convictions. From the time he was ten years of 
age he began to think on religious things. He 
had a remarkable experience of conversion. He 
knew the Bible from cover to cover, and he 
worked out his own system of systematic theol- 


138 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


ogy. He confined himself to the Bible and one 
or two other books, and he had plenty of time to 
concentrate, being most of his natural life in jail. 

Wherever he went to preach in his later 
years crowds thronged his ministry. When he 
came to London a thousand people would get out 
to church at seven o’clock in the morning to hear 
him preach, and three thousand people would 
come in the afternoon, hot or cold, rain or snow, 
and many would be turned away. He had the 
magnetism and the power of the orator, but 
above all he preached in the demonstration of the 
Spirit and of power. One of the king’s chaplains, 
a serious-minded man, went to hear him preach, 
and the king twitted him for wasting his time 
going to hear a tinker. He replied, “Your 
majesty, if you will pardon my saying it, I would 
exchange all of my learning and everything else 
I have for that man’s gift.” 

Bunyan always had a vital message; he 
preached with a purpose. In “Grace Abound¬ 
ing” he says: “In my preaching I have really 
been in pain, and have, as it were, travailed to 
bring forth Children to God; neither could I be 
satisfied unless some fruits did appear in my 
work. If I were fruitless it mattered not who 


JOHN BUNYAN 


139 


commended me; but if I were fruitful I cared 
not who did condemn. I have thought of that, 
He that winneth souls is wise; and again, Lo, 
children are an Heritage of the Lord; and the 
fruit of the Womb is his reward. As arrows in 
the hand of a mighty man, so are Children of the 
Youth. Happy is the man that hath filled his 
Quiver full of them; they shall not be ashamed, 
but they shall speak with the Enemies in the 
Gate. 

“Sometimes, again, when I have been 
preaching, I have been violently assaulted with 
thoughts of blasphemy, and strongly tempted to 
speak the words with my mouth before the Con¬ 
gregation. I have also at some times, even when 
I have begun to speak the Word with much 
clearness, evidence and liberty of speech, yet 
been before the ending of that Opportunity so 
blinded, and so estranged from the things I have 
been speaking, and have also been so straitened 
in my speech as to utterance before the people, 
that I have been as if I had not known or remem¬ 
bered what I have been about, or as if my head 
had been in a bag all the time of the Exercise. 

“Again, when at sometimes I have been 
about to preach upon some smart and searching 


140 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


portion of the Word, I have found the Tempter 
suggest, What! will you preach this? this con¬ 
demns yourself; of this your own Soul is guilty. 
Wherefore preach not of it at all; or if you do, 
yet so mince it as to make way for your own 
escape; lest instead of awakening others, you lay 
that guilt upon your own Soul, as you will never 
get from under. But, I thank the Lord, I have 
been kept from consenting to these so horrid sug¬ 
gestions, and have rather, as Sampson, bowed 
myself with all my might to condemn Sin and 
Transgression wherever I found it; yea, though 
therein also I did bring guilt upon my own Con¬ 
science! Let me die, thought I, with the Philis¬ 
tines, rather than deal corruptly with the Blessed 
Word of God. Thou that teachest another, 
teachest thou not thyself ?” 

His last sermon was in a church at White¬ 
chapel on Sunday, August 19 , 1688 , from John 
1 : 13 , “Who were born not of blood nor of the 
will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of 
God.” His concluding exhortation was “Be ye 
holy in all manner of conversation.” What he 
said deserves to be quoted and remembered: 
“Consider that the Holy God is your Father, and 
let this oblige you to live like the children of God, 


JOHN BUNYAN 


141 


that ye may look your Father in the face with 
comfort another day.” 

An Errand of Mercy 
Leads Bunyan to His Death 

His death was characteristic of him. He 
was looked upon by all the Baptists as an arbiter, 
and was often called to settle disputes. In 
August, 1688, he went from Bedford to Reading 
to reconcile a father and son who were estranged. 
He was successful in bringing them together in 
peace and harmony. Going from Reading to 
London on horseback he was caught in a pour¬ 
ing-down rain. He reached the home of a friend, 
John Strudwick, on Snow Hill, London. Strud- 
wick was a grocer, a member of a London Bap¬ 
tist Church, and a great admirer of Bunyan. 
Bunyan was thirty-six years older than Strud¬ 
wick, but they were congenial friends. It must 
have been about the middle of August that 
Bunyan entered Strudwick’s house, for on the 
nineteenth he preached at Whitechapel. 

At the same time he was sending his last 
book through the press, “The Acceptable Sacri¬ 
fice,” based on the seventeenth verse of the fifty- 


142 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


first Psalm, “The sacrifices are a broken spirit; 
a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt 
not despise.” Like all serious-minded and 
dynamic men, Bunyan felt that he ought to work 
even when he was sick. Perhaps if he had gone 
to bed and stayed there when he got to Strud- 
wick’s house around the eighteenth he would have 
lived longer; but it is hard to keep an energetic 
man in bed. 

Many of the sayings of Bunyan during his 
last illness have been preserved. You will remem¬ 
ber that when Christian and Hopeful are going 
over the river on the other side of which is the 
City of God, that it is written after Christian 
had feared, “Christian, therefore, presently 
found ground to stand upon, and so it followed 
that the rest of the river was but shallow. Thus 
they got over. Now upon the bank of the river 
on the other side they saw the two shining men 
again, who were waiting for them; wherefore 
being come out of the river they saluted them 
saying, ‘We are ministering Spirits sent forth to 
minister for those that shall be heirs of salvation.’ 
Thus they went along toward the gate.” 

And so Bunyan, crossing over the river 
“found ground to stand upon.” His religion 


JOHN BUNYAN 


143 


was very real to him, and heaven was sure. There 
was no more fear in his heart. His dying words 
were, “Weep not for me but for yourselves: I 
go to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who 
will, no doubt, through the mediation of his 
Blessed Son, receive me, though a sinner, where 
I hope that we ere long shall meet to sing the 
new song and remain for everlastingly happy, 
world without end.” 

On Friday, August 31, 1688, John Bunyan 
died. When the news reached the church at 
Bedford the place became a Bochin, a place of 
weeping. He was carried to Bunhill Fields, 
Finsbury, which Southey called “the Campo 
Santo of the Dissenters.” Like his Lord, he lay 
in the tomb of a friend, for John Strudwick pur¬ 
chased a new tomb for his honored guest. It is 
remarkable that while since Bunyan’s time a lot 
of people who have started what they call a new 
religion have grown wealthy, Bunyan with all his 
genius was not able to leave much for his family. 
He regarded not riches. His faithful wife, 
Elizabeth, was left the sum of 42 pounds and 19 
shillings. This was all she had except the royal¬ 
ties on his books, which were not very great be- 


144 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


cause the books were sold not so much for profit 
as to do good. 

Bunyan had six children: four by his first 
wife, Mary, and these were, Mary, the blind girl, 
Elizabeth, John and Thomas; by his second wife, 
Elizabeth, he had a girl named Sarah, and a 
boy, Joseph. Mary, his blind child, died before 
him. Like other great geniuses his children did 
not inherit his genius, and his first-born son, 
John, became a tinker and carried on business in 
Bedford till he died in 1728, one hundred years 
after the birth of his father. The other children 
married good, but ordinary men, and the family 
has just about disappeared. 

Bunyan’s Own Portrait 

You will remember that when Christian goes 
into the House of the Interpreter there is a pic¬ 
ture on the wall, and this is what he sees of the 
man in the picture: “He had eyes lifted up to 
heaven, the best of books was in his hand, the law 
of truth was written upon his lips, and the world 
was behind his back.” How true that was of 
John Bunyan, for he drew his own picture there. 
He had but one destination, and that was heaven; 


JOHN BUNYAN 


145 


one book, and that was the Bible, the book which 
made him; nothing but grace and truth flowed 
from his lips, and the world was ever behind his 
back. You remember in Vanity Fair that the 
pilgrims viewed with disdain, and had no mind 
to buy the merchandise of the fair, such as 
“houses, lands, trades, places, honors, prefer¬ 
ment, titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures 
and delights of all sorts.” 

Bunyan felt the spirit of the message that 
Paul wrote to the Church at Corinth when advis¬ 
ing them that the time was very short; that those 
who had wives should live as if they had none; 
buyers should live as if they had no hold on their 
goods, and those who mix in the world live as if 
they were not engrossed in it, for the present 
phase of things is passing away. Bunyan was 
absolutely unselfish, and was never spotted with 
this world. When he got up in the world he 
found that folks were always wanting to do 
something for him. When he needed their help 
he could not get it; but when he did not need it, 
and could look out for himself, his books were 
bringing him in a little money. “To him that hath 
shall be given,” is the way it always works. In 
later life a London merchant offered to take his 



Drawn by Ralph Chessi 


Giant Despair 





JOHN BUNYAN 


147 


son into his house. He replied, “God did not 
send me to advance my family, but to preach 
the gospel/’ 

On one occasion a friend complimented him 
after the service on the “sweet sermon” he had 
delivered. He said, “You need not remind me of 
that; the devil told me of it before I was out of 
the pulpit.” It was said he never spoke of him¬ 
self, never bragged of his talent, but seemed low 
in his own eyes. He never reproached nor reviled 
anyone, not even those who put him in prison. 
He had mighty fine judgment in his last years, 
and he made it his study not to give offense. 

Like Moses, who in his youth had been a 
fire-eater and killed a man, Bunyan, though a 
high-strung youth, became one of the meekest 
men who ever lived. A friend who knew him 
and drew a pen-picture of him said he was “tall 
of stature, strong boned though not corpulent, 
somewhat of a ruddy face with sparkling eyes, 
wearing his hair on his upper lip; his hair red¬ 
dish, but in the latter days sprinkled with gray; 
his nose well set, but not declining nor bending; 
his mouth moderate large, his forehead somewhat 
high, and his habit always plain and modest.” 


148 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


The first copy of Pilgrim’s Progress could 
be bought for a shilling and sixpence; the same 
book today would command thousands of dol¬ 
lars. The warrant for his arrest in 1672 recently 
sold for over $1,500. More people know of John 
Bunyan today than did when he was carried to 
Bunhill Fields. His body is there, but his book 
has gone to every quarter of the world. 

Secrets of Success 

What were the secrets of Bunyan’s success? 
Every biographer has pointed out that his style 
was made by the Bible. This is true. In the sev¬ 
enteenth century men did not only read the 
Bible but they believed it and spoke it literally. 
They expressed themselves in biblical terms. 
That purest well of English undefiled, the Bible, 
was the version that came from the order of 
King James. It was young then, having been on 
the market only a few years, and its poetry and 
sound and stalwart English did more to influ¬ 
ence English speech than any other book. The 
Puritan went to the Bible to get his figures of 
speech, and when he would describe a thing it 


JOHN BUNYAN 


149 


would be most often in the language of the 
Scriptures. 

You remember how Cromwell compared 
wicked kings to Agag and wicked queens to 
Jezebel. When he described a battle, for instance 
the Battle of Dunbar, which was his “crowning 
glory” and the “clowning glory” of his adver¬ 
saries, the sun was rising and he gave the order 
to attack, and it was in the language of Scripture 
that he encouraged his troops, and afterwards 
described the event. “Let God arise, and let His 
enemies be scattered. Like as the sun riseth, so 
shalt thou drive them away.” 

The Scripture swallowed up conceptions of 
Government. You will remember that Cromwell 
was offered a crown three times, and he would 
have liked to take it, too, but why didn’t he? For 
the good and simple reason that the Scriptures in 
the minds of the Puritans were against it. They 
wanted no king but Jehovah; they were willing 
to have a President or a Protector, but the idea 
of the theocracy was so strong in their minds 
that the only king that they prayed for was the 
King of Kings who would establish his kingdom 
on earth. You remember the Fifth Monarchy 

Men and the desire to set up the reign of King 
11 


150 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Jesus. That is just how far the Bible dominated 
the age. 

Bunyan said he was never out of the Bible 
either by reading or meditation. He did not have 
to bring in his biblical illustrations by the ears. 
The truth is it was hard for him to describe any¬ 
thing without having recourse to something in the 
Book. When we discuss Bunyan’s style we can 
see at a glance that the Bible shaped it. 

However, there is one factor in his style 
which is the very essence of simplicity which is 
overlooked. He says in his preface to “Grace 
Abounding” that his experience with God was 
the mainspring of his simplicity. His words are 
well worth quoting: “I could have enlarged much 
in this my Discourse of my Temptations and 
Troubles for Sin; as also of the merciful Kind¬ 
ness and Working of God with my Soul. I could 
also have stepped into a Style much higher than 
this in which I have here Discoursed, and could 
have adorned all things more than here I have 
seemed to do; but I dare not. God did not play 
in convincing of me; the Devil did not play in 
tempting of me; neither did I play when I sunk 
as into a bottomless pit, when the pangs of hell 
caught hold upon me: wherefore I may not play 


JOHN BUNYAN 


151 


in my relating of them, but be plain and simple, 
and lay down the thing as it was. He that liketh 
it, let him receive it; and he that does not, let him 
produce a better.” We are quite in agreement 
with Bunyan. It would be hard for us to be¬ 
lieve, however, that the Lord ever influenced any¬ 
body to be voluminous. We agree to the inspira¬ 
tion of simplicity—but not prolixity. 

He Stocked the Fodder Low 

Of course Bunyan had the good sense to 
stock the fodder low, putting it within reach of 
the common people, and a book which the com¬ 
mon people can get, the critics are sure to 
understand by and by. It took the critics a hun¬ 
dred years in Bunyan’s case, for even Addison 
was turning up his nose at Pilgrim’s Progress; 
but the critics finally knuckled under. Bunyan 
never got above his raising, and never tried to. 
If he did not wield the sharp, polished Damascus 
blade of Saladin, he did wield the heavy and 
effective English battle-ax of Richard the Lion 
Hearted; and he could, with one stroke “cleave 
a churl to the chine.” One swing of his verbal 
poleax and you dropped in your tracks. 


152 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Get down the Pilgrim and select any page 
you want, and see how it abounds in short, un¬ 
adorned but strong Anglo-Saxon words. He 
used these with greater effect than any man who 
put a pen to paper, and I do not even except 
Chaucer. Pure Anglo-Saxon lends itself to allit¬ 
eration, and Bunyan had this poetic quality. 
Notice it in the proverbs he left, such as, “A bird 
in the hand is worth two in the bush”; “Penny 
wise and pound foolish”; “Hedges have eyes and 
little pitchers have ears.” He was intensely col¬ 
loquial, but every natural writer is. 

I have read a great deal on Bunyan, but I 
have never found a single reference to his prayer 
life; most writers hardly refer to it, and yet it 
is the biggest thing in his life, along with his 
intense study of the Bible. You cannot under¬ 
stand him without taking his agonizing with God 
in prayer into the equation. If it had not been 
for his habit of earnest prayer he would have 
slipped his eccentric. 

You will remember in “Grace Abounding” 
he tells of reading some “Ranter’s” books, and 
meeting some of these wild brethren. He said he 
had one religious intimate companion, a poor 
man, who “turned a most devilish Ranter,” and 


JOHN BUNYAN 


153 


gave himself over to uncleanness. The Ranters 
were the Holy Rollers of that day, and a good 
many of them had the notion that if they had 
ever been converted they could do anything and 
it would not make any difference; once saved 
always saved. They condemned Bunyan as legal 
and dark, saying that when a man had attained 
perfection he could do anything he wanted and 
not sin. These doctrines were pleasing to the 
flesh. 

Even in His Prayer Life 
Bunyan Retained His Humanity 

Bunyan was then but a very young man, 
and, as he says, “my nature in its prime.” They 
wrote mighty plausible things in the books about 
attaining to spiritual perfection, and spiritual 
perfection was what he wanted. But what did 
he do? His common sense and his spiritual urge 
made him go to God in prayer, and his prayer is 
characteristic, showing that he had that wonder¬ 
ful faculty of being able to understand himself. 
Note it: “O Lord, I am a fool and not able to 
know the Truth from Error. Lord, leave me not 
to my own Blindness, either to approve of or 


154 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


condemn this Doctrine. If it be of God let me 
not despise it; if it be of the Devil let me not 
embrace it. Lord, I lay my soul in this matter 
only at Thy feet; let me not be deceived, I hum¬ 
bly beseech Thee.” After he was delivered from 
this delusion he blessed God who had put it into 
his heart to pray, for he said he had seen the 
effect of that prayer in preserving him, not only 
from Ranting errors, but those which sprung up 
afterwards. 

His habit of prayer saved him in later life 
also from some grevious mistakes. When he was 
having his controversy with his own brethren re¬ 
garding baptism and communion he might have 
become intolerant if he had not prayed; prayer 
kept him humble and sane. He could never pray 
the prayer of the Pharisee, even when honors 
were being heaped on him, “O Lord, I thank 
Thee I am not as other men are,” but, like 
Luther, who thanked the Lord that he had made 
him a poor, simple man, so Bunyan retained his 
humanity. That was an age when the theological 
world was broken into as many pieces as a glass 
snake, and every contentious sectary was dead 
sure that he was right, and dead sure, too, that the 
other fellow was wrong. But Bunyan refused to 


JOHN BUNYAN 


155 


leave the right track. He said, “I would be as I 
hope I am, a Christian. But for these factious 
titles of Anabaptist, Independent, Presbyterian, 
and the like, I conclude that they come neither 
from Jerusalem nor from Antioch, but from 
Hell or from Babylon.” This is a sentiment that 
some folks ought to be reminded of today. Bun- 
yan was more than three hundred years ahead 
of his time. 

There was no spiritual pride in Bunyan, 
either. Although he had a wonderful experience 
he never bragged about it. A sense of our in¬ 
firmities will keep a man from being a Pharisee 
and a fool. You will recall that in the “Holy 
War,” though the people in Mansoul were deliv¬ 
ered, still they were subject to certain tempta¬ 
tions. This is the experience of all Christian peo¬ 
ple, and it was Bunyan’s experience. He said: 
“I find to this day seven Abominations in my 
Heart: 1. Inclinings to Unbelief. 2. Suddenly 
to forget the Love and Mercy that Christ mani¬ 
fested. 3. A leaning to the Works of the Law. 
4. Wanderings and coldness in Prayer. 5. To 
forget to watch for that I pray for. 6. Apt to 
murmur because I have no more, and yet ready 
to abuse what I have. 7. I can do none of those 


156 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


things which God commands me, but my cor¬ 
ruptions will thrust in themselves. When I 
would do good evil is present with me. 

“These things I continually see and feel, and 
am afflicted and oppressed with; yet the Wisdom 
of God doth order them to my good. 1. They 
make me abhor myself. 2. They keep me from 
trusting my heart. 3. They convince me of the 
Insufficiency of all inherent Righteousness. 4. 
They show me the necessity of fleeing to Jesus. 
5. They press me to pray unto God. 6. They 
show me the need I have to watch and be sober. 
7. And provoke me to look to God, through 
Christ, to help me and carry me through this 
world.” 


That Saving Grace of Humor 

Bunyan had a sense of humor. You can see 
that all through his writings. The Pilgrim’s 
Progress has been called the “great epic of 
Puritanism.” It represents the Puritan mind, 
more than anything .Milton ever wrote. But 
Bunyan though a Puritan of the Puritans in 
conduct had a sense of humor which like a bub¬ 
bling well came to the surface, rippling and 


JOHN BUNYAN 


157 


sparkling. You get touches of it everywhere. 
For instance, in the Pilgrim, Formalist and 
Hypocrisy do not enter by the Strait Gate, but 
come tumbling over the walls; and they tell 
Christian that in their land of Vainglory the gate 
was too far around, so they always took a short¬ 
cut. Take the character of the judge who tries 
Christian and Faithful at Vanity Fair; after 
abusing Faithful for all he is worth he tells him 
that he is going to show him how good and gentle 
he can be. 

Take the character of Talkative, who could 
set his tongue to work and then go off and leave 
it, and come back and find it hitting on all six. 
He could talk on anything at a moment’s notice: 
heavenly things, earthly, moral, evangelical, 
sacred, profane, things past or to come; things 
foreign or things at home; things essential or 
things circumstantial. This Talkative—the son 
of one Say-well, dwells in Prating Row. Chris¬ 
tian has to smile at him, for he says, “This man 
is for any company and for any talk; as he talk- 
eth now with you so will he talk when he is on 
the Ale-bench; and the more drink he hath in his 
crown the more of these things he hath in his 
mouth; religion hath no place in his heart, or 
12 


158 


TINKER AND THINKER : 


house, or conversation; all he hath lieth in his 
tongue, and his religion is to make a noise there¬ 
with.” 

Another sample of Bunyan’s humor is found 
in the character of Mr. Byends of the town of 
Fair-speech. He brags about his well-to-do rela¬ 
tives, Lord Turn-about, Lord Time-server, Lord 
Fair-speech, “from whose ancestors that town 
first took its name”; there is also Mr. Smooth- 
man, Mr. Facing-both-ways, Mr. Anything, 
“and the parson of our parish, Mr. Two- 
Tongues, was my mother’s own brother by fath¬ 
er’s side; and to tell you the truth I am become a 
gentleman of good quality; yet my great grand¬ 
father was but a waterman, looking one way and 
rowing another.” This Mr. Byends married 
Lady Feigning’s daughter. This considerate 
couple never strove against wind and tide; were 
always most zealous when religion went in silver 
slippers. But read the book for yourself, and 
chuckle over the quaint humor. 

In 1701 a London Puritan published some 
poems that Bunyan had written, which he en¬ 
titled, “Country Rhimes for Children.” A good 
many of these poems were full of delicious 
humor, but the publisher, who had no funnybone, 


JOHN BUNYAN 


159 


threw out twenty-five of the seventy-four 
“rhimes” on the ground that they were too 
humorous, and he gave this book for children the 
sobering title of, “Divine Emblems.” You will 
recall in the preface to the Pilgrim that Bunyan 
asks, “Would’st thou in a moment laugh and 
weep?” He knew that there was humor in the 
book, and he left it there. 

Bunyan the Poet 

Bunyan had the poetic gift highly devel¬ 
oped. We are quite sure he knew nothing about 
spondees, pentameters and hexameters; he cared 
nothing for literature as literature. Whether he 
wrote prose or poetry he was always aiming at 
one thing, and that was to help the souls of men. 
He knew nothing about measuring verse; in fact 
he was unhampered by any artificialities what¬ 
ever. We do not mean that he was a great poet, 
for some of his poetry was like Mephibosheth in 
that it was lame in both feet; but some of it was 
the real stuff. There is no straining after effect; 
everything is natural, and there is a homely 
beauty about it. He saw it in the sunrise, in the 
clouds and in the trees. Read these lines: 


160 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


“Look how brave Sol doth peep up from beneath, 
Shows us his golden face, doth on us breathe; 
Yea, he doth compass us around with glories 
Whilst he ascends up to his highest stories, 
While he his banner over us displays. 

And gives us light to see our works and ways. 
And thus it is when Jesus shows his face, 

And doth assure us of his love and grace.” 

And read this more serious poem: 

“Sin is the living worm, the lasting fire; 

Hell soon would lose its heat could sin expire. 
Better sinless in hell than to be where 
Heaven is, and to be found a sinner there. 

One sinless with infernals might do well, 

But sin would make of heaven a very hell. 
Look to thyself then, keep it out of door, 

Lest it get in and never leave thee more.” 

They Copied Him, 

Satired Him — Tried to 
Improve Upon Him 

They say that imitation is the sincerest flat¬ 
tery. If those in heaven are capable of being 
flattered we can picture Bunyan leaning over the 


JOHN BUNYAN 


161 


golden bars and feeling a delightful glow. It 
was his prayer that his book should have free 
course like the Word of God to run and be glori¬ 
fied. It was his desire that men should treasure 
it up and profit by it, but he never expected some 
things to happen. For instance, only five years 
after Bunyan’s death a conscienceless literary 
pirate named J. Blare, whose address was the 
'‘Looking-glass on London Bridge,” felt that he 
could get somewhere on Bunyan’s name, so he 
printed part three, saying that after the two 
former dreams of Christian and Christiana, his 
wife, he fell asleep again and had another dream, 
and he was generously giving it, for a price, of 
course, to an expectant public. He signed it 
“J. B.,” which could mean either John Bunyan, 
or J. Blare. During his lifetime Bunyan had 
hinted at a third part, and of course everybody 
who had read parts one and two wanted this 
third part, so it sold very readily. 

A great many imitations followed. One w^as 
entitled, “From Methodism to Christianity.” 
This was around 1680. The politicians took it 
up, and there was one called “The Statesman’s 
Progress, or a Pilgrimage to Greatness.” Brown 
says, that this was directed at Sir Robert Wal- 


162 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


pole, who was called Badman, who went to 
Greatness Hall to get the Golden Pippins, which 
he used as bribes to corrupt Parliament. There 
was a political Pilgrim’s Progress in which a Pil¬ 
grim sets out from the City of Plunder, and the 
burden on his back is our ever-discussed subject 
of “Taxes.” One of the most amusing was a 
book entitled, “The Pilgrim’s Progress of John 
Bunyan, for the use of children in the English 
Church,” written by an Established clergyman, 
a Warden of Sackville College, Oxford. As a 
piece of brazen effrontery it is hard to beat, and 
yet it is really funny. 

Bunyan was pretty broad minded, as we 
have shown, but if he had a pet abhorrence it was 
the use of the Prayer-book and the ceremonies of 
the Established Church. During his pastorate at 
Bedford a certain Robert Nelson quit going to 
the meeting-house and began to attend the 
Established Church, being received into that 
communion by confirmation. Bunyan was horri¬ 
fied; he and his members threw Robert Nelson 
out of the church on the grounds that “he was 
openly and profanely bishopt after the Anti¬ 
christian order of that generation; to ye great 
profanation of God’s order and heartbreaking of 


JOHN BUNYAN 


163 


his Christian brethren.” Now this pious church 
warden went to work and made baptism as a 
means of spiritual life, placing a well in the gar¬ 
den at the Wicket Gate, into which Christian 
dips himself three times “the which when he had 
done he was changed into another man,” and at 
the baptismal well his burden rolled away. The 
House Beautiful becomes the Ceremony of Con¬ 
firmation—you remember what Bunyan said 
about “profanely bishopt.” The writer of this 
remarkable summersault says in justification that 
this is the way Bunyan would have written it if 
he had known better. 

And then Nathaniel Hawthorne, years 
afterwards, taking a shot at the flabbiness of 
religious life in his day wrote a satire. He goes 
to the City of Destruction, and finds that a 
Pilgrim does not have to walk any more: there 
is a railroad from that place to the Celestial 
City; the Slough of Despond has been all sur¬ 
faced over, and you go through the Hill Diffi¬ 
culty by the way of a tunnel. The silver mine 
of Demas is paying dividends, and Doubting 
Castle is a fine, modern building with all the 
conveniences. There is a steam ferryboat going 
to the Celestial City. The only drawback is that 


164 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


no one knew whether it ever reached the other 
side or not. There were whole flocks of pilgrims 
twittering in long primer for young and old, for 
men and women, for preachers and politicians; 
there were burlesque Pilgrims, and some wag got 
after the pious church warden and had Bunyan’s 
ghost go on a pilgrimage to the bedroom of this 
good brother, and scare him half to death. 

Another interesting event occurred when a 
good vicar in 1811 published what he called a 
“corrected edition” in which he said he “improved 
the phraseology of the author, elucidated his ob¬ 
scurities, and did away with his redundancies.” 
This edition illustrated that to attempt to im¬ 
prove on Bunyan was to ruin him. Of course it 
went out of print with his first edition, while 
Bunyan’s work is still going on. John Wesley 
published an amended edition in 1774. 

The Universality 
of Pilgrim’s Progress 

The great beauty of the Progress is that all 
churches can unite on the book. The picture he 
draws of his Pilgrim is not a sectarian one but a 
Christian one. Possibly every missionary society 


JOHN BUNYAN 


165 


under the shining heavens, whether it be Congre¬ 
gational, Baptist, Presbyterian, Episcopal, have 
all ordered the book published for their work in 
the foreign field. It appeals to the native sim¬ 
plicity of the people they are working with. Even 
the Roman Catholics have printed the book as is, 
except the reference to Giant Pope. 

In Japan they have Christian in a kimona, 
working his way up the Hill Difficulty; in China 
the House Beautiful is a pagoda; in Arabia he 
wears a white burnous, and the keepers of the 
vineyard, who read the book while they watch 
the grapes, feel that Christian is one of them 
and that he fits into their country quite as natu¬ 
rally as a palm around an oasis. It is the uni¬ 
versal book with characters which have that touch 
of nature which makes the whole world kin. 

In the peat bogs of Ireland and where the 
River Shannon flows they read in the evening 
light the story of the Pilgrim. It is read by the 
fiords of Norway, in the chill of Iceland, on the 
Russian steppes, and down near the spot where 
John Huss’ body was burned in Prague. The 
descendants of the Hugenots read it under the 
shadow of the Tuilleries. It is read in the land 
of Cervantes, and the Arab, the Armenian, the 


166 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


Argentine and the Greek may find life in its 
pages. It is read in India, in Africa, in Mexico, 
in the Fiji Islands, and has even been translated 
for the benefit of the Cree Indians. 

The blind may read it in Braille, and there 
is no nation under the sun that does not know 
its presence. After the missionary translates the 
Bible he translates Pilgrim’s Progress, and that 
day when the last trump is sounded and the 
heavens roll up like a scroll some sincere soul will 
see with his latest earthly sight the pages of this 
book. 

Bunyan — 

Teacher of Childhood 

A committee headed by the Earl of Shafts- 
bury put a beautiful statue over the grave of 
Bunyan in Bunhill Fields in 1861. This recum¬ 
bent statue is suggestive of the dreamer. In 1874, 
June 10, an even more beautiful statue to his 
memory was erected on St. Peter’s green, Bed¬ 
ford. This was presented to the Borough of 
Bedford by the Ninth Duke of Bedford. This 
statue shows Bunyan standing with a book in 
his hand. When the statue was unveiled Dean 


JOHN BUNYAN 


167 


Stanley of Westminster made the principal 
speech. This was significant for it showed that 
the good men in the Established Church were 
not in sympathy with the blind and mean perse¬ 
cution which had put a blot on their history. 
Certainly no one for a moment would blame the 
devout Christian souls in the Established Church 
for the foolishness of their fathers. 

Perhaps no greater tribute was ever paid 
Bunyan than was paid him on this occasion when 
this man who stood in the very forefront of his 
Church in that great nation spoke glowingly of 
his genius and his goodness. There was one thing 
Dean Stanley said that deserves to be remem¬ 
bered. He spoke of Bunyan who was great as a 
man and as a preacher, but greater still “as the 
dear teacher of the childhood of each of us, as the 
creator of those characters whose names and 
faces are familiar to the whole world.” I have 
no doubt but that you, reader, read Bunyan as a 
child, and you can say with the poet Cowper as 
you go gleaning down the fields of memory in 
the golden sunlight of later life, 

“Oh thou, whom borne on fancy’s eager wing, 
Back to the season of Life’s happy spring, 


168 


TINKER AND THINKER: 


I pleased remember and while memory yet holds 
Fast her office here can never forget. 

Ingenious dreamer, in whose well-told tale 
Sweet fiction and sweet truth alike prevail; 
Whose humorous vein strong sense and simple 
style 

May teach the gayest, make the bravest smile; 
Witty and well employed, and like thy Lord, 
Speaking in parables His slighted word.” 

“ * * * Rather Than Thus 
to Violate My Faith 
and Principle” 

And now, before we part, let us understand 
each other. What I have been trying to do in 
everything I have written is to make you see 
Bunyan as a man of God. I am praying that 
there may be a new birth in the lives of those who 
would follow John Bunyan’s Lord. We can 
learn with profit a few things from the life of 
this man. I wish we had something of his conse¬ 
cration, of his devotion to a cause; I wish we had 
something of the same stuff in our system that 
would make us love the Lord supremely, and 
“reverence our conscience as our king.” 


JOHN BUNYAN 


169 


I wish that instead of trying to side-step and 
live softly we would say as he said when they 
offered him liberty at the price of his convic¬ 
tions: “But if nothing will do, unless I make of 
my conscience a continual butchery and slaugh¬ 
ter-shop, unless, putting out my own eyes, I com¬ 
mit me to the blind to lead me, as I doubt is 
desired by some, I have determined, the 
Almighty God being my help and shield, yet to 
suffer, if frail life might continue so long, even 
till the moss shall grow on mine eyebrows, rather 
than thus to violate my faith and principles.” 












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